Patchwork
by aforgottenwish
Summary: Complete! Smallville.Buffy crossover1. The meteor rocks in Smallville have a familiar effect on vampires, an effect identical to how vampires react to the Gem of Amara. Buffy relocates to Smallville to prevent an army of unkillable vamps from rising.
1. Chapter 1

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter One 5648

Buffy ran. It wasn't something that she loved to do—she even felt a little bit ashamed for having spun away from her opponent as she had—but it was something that she was good at. Even in her trendy Italian heels she could fly, and it wasn't like the vampire was chasing her. He was probably still limp against that wall; he was probably more shocked than she had been.

Despite the lateness of the hour she still had to push through the crowds, the cobblestone roads tripping her up every so often; the large stone in her pocket crashing against her leg every other step.

It wasn't possible: she knew it, and the vampire had known it. It went against the rules that Buffy had lived with since she had been called: when a wooden stake goes through a vampire's heart, it turns into dust and ceases to exist. She was sure that the rule wasn't, had never been, put the stake through the vampire's heart and the hole will seal itself up again.

The only other time she had seen something like that had been when Spike had been wearing the Gem of Amara, that green, shining ring—

She stopped running, her eyes widening as she reached into her pocket. Giles had given her the rock earlier that day, not as a gift, as such a pretty glowing stone might have been, but as a project.

_I've no idea what it is or what it does_, he might as well have been saying, _so you figure it out._ She had dropped the rock into her pocket and essentially forgotten about it, excluding when it occasionally accosted her thigh. She pulled it into the open and studied it—it was green and ridged, like it had been blown away from the rest of the stone.

She remembered the gem that Spike had worn; how it had glittered in the sun, how cocky and untouchable he had been with it on his finger. She remembered driving the stake home; it had punctured his sternum, and, instead of the feeling of relief rushing through her as he turned to dust, there was a feeling of dread as he smiled.

He had grabbed her hand and smirked. "Oh, do it again," he had said. "It tickles."

For the period of time she had stood there, the crowd around her had parted. The vampire, an attractive Italian boy, had followed her, swaggering like he ruled the world.

"_Mi amour_," he hissed. "I cannot be killed." He sounded astonished and proud, as if he had accomplished something that all others could not.

Before he had a chance to get any closer, before he could leech of the power from the stone, she drew a stake from her purse and threw it, barely taking time to aim. She ran again, this time faster, more urgently. She heard the people gasp in unison as the vampire turned to dust, and she ran faster. The gem of Amara had been the size of a pea and it had allowed the vampire wearing it to be unstoppable. The rock she now held in her hand was larger than her fist. She had to find out where it had come from.

She had to find out if there was more.

Q

Smallville was often a dangerous town to live in. Since the first meteor shower, Smallville was known for its insane righteous killers, all of them convinced they were in the right, and most of them with strange abilities. Clark was therefore not shocked to hear screams coming from the alley outside the Talon. He had been helping his mother to close up, as only one with superhuman speed could, when the screams had breached the silence of the night.

As he sped around the corner it saw that it was not a usual dark-alley crime—it was not a mugging, a rape or a murder—it was a tall man, holding up the limp body of a woman, with his teeth sunk deeply into her neck.

Clark tore him away from her, throwing him against the wall of the building, before deftly catching the girl's flaccid body. He scooped up her legs, making sure that she was breathing, and trying to stop the blood flowing from her neck.

The man was standing again, and it was then that Clark was able to get a look at him. His brows were strangely furrowed, disfigured even, curving downward in a wrinkly, angry grimace. His lips were covered in blood, and protruding from under the stretched lips were sharp, jagged teeth.

A word escaped Clark's lips before he could stop himself. "Vampire…"

This one wasn't the same as Lana had been. At least, Lana's face hadn't twisted and contorted when she had drunk from Chloe. He turned away from it, wanting to get the girl to a hospital, but before he could move the vampire had thrown himself onto Clark's neck.

The vampire's scream was deafening in Clark's ear. It pulled away, continuing to scream, and Clark stared as its face shifted, becoming more human.

It was only later, when he was at the hospital waiting to hear how the girl was doing, that he felt something fall from the collar of his shirt.

It was a blood-covered fang.

Q

"Giles," Buffy said as she pushed open his hotel room door, "the last time you showed me a pretty rock I got all sick and weak and then you sent a starving steroid-filled vampire at me."

"I did, I, I, rather, apologized and Buffy, I," Giles stuttered, pulling his glasses off and cleaning them nervously. "I did quit the council after that, and, rather…"

"All I'm saying," Buffy interrupted, "is that I should have known better than to take another rock from you." She let the green rock come crashing to the table. "Where did you get it from?" she demanded.

"An American friend of mine sent it to me," he said. "He said it had rather, interesting properties. He insisted that it weakened some rather bothersome creatures."

"If by weaken, you mean make un-slayable, then yeah," Buffy said. "Weaken."

Giles put his glasses back on. His brow furrowed, and he stuttered a bit before letting Buffy continue.

"Do you remember the gem of Amara?" Buffy asked. "I'm guessing that this is a big jagged-y stone of Amara. If there's more of it, and if word gets out to the vampire community that there's more of it… well let's just say even the whole bunch of Slayers-in-training we have at our school isn't going to be much help killing things that can't be killed."

"Oh dear," Giles replied. "I'll call the friend who sent it to me. He's an old friend of mine from when, well, my rather rebellious days."

Buffy took this time to call Willow, Dawn and Xander from their respective rooms—they were all, except for Giles, staying at the school that they had founded for training Slayers. It had been built on the location where the Watcher's Council had been, and been funded almost completely by an American company that was interested in the Slayer powers for analytical use.

They arrived together; all had been clearly surprised by Buffy's serious tone. Since Willow's spell and the destruction of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, they had all been on the down-low, not worrying about the world ending or excessive vampires roaming the streets. There were over fifty girls currently training at their school, and about fifty more doing field work with Faith around the world. The good-vs.-evil balance seemed to be seriously tipping in their favour, and they had all expected that it would keep up.

"We have a situation," Buffy said, as they entered. "So, we're going home."

"Home?" Dawn shrieked. "I just started university. That's not fair!"

Buffy winced. "I know, Dawn. I just started school too, remember? If you'd let me explain…"

"Yeah, sure, go ahead," Dawn said, flippantly. "Tell me why you're ruining my life."

"You all remember when Spike found the gem of Amara," Buffy started.

"My ribs never quite recovered," Xander said. "But Spike's not exactly a problem anymore."

Buffy flinched. "You didn't like him, I know," she retorted, "but he gave his life for us. He saved the world."

"There's lots of tension-y badness here," Willow intervened. "Maybe we could get to the second part of that sentence: the part about the ring that makes vampires resistant to sun, stakes and all that is holy."

"Giles gave this to me today," Buffy said, pointing to the green rock. "It might have been coincidence, but when I staked a vampire that was close to it, there was a really gross 'shloomp-ing' noise, and no dusty vamp, just a really damn cocky vamp."

Willow picked up the rock. She turned it all around, looking at every ridge, before muttering in Latin under her breath. "There's no magic on this rock. How do you know it had to do with the rock? Couldn't it have been something that the vampire did?"

"Long range stake-age dusted it."

Willow nodded and placed the rock on the desk. "It's not of any element that I immediately recognize, but I can have some tests done on it."

Dawn cleared her throat. "Can we get back to the part where you tear me away from all my friends? It's not like we can go back to Sunnydale, unless you're planning to pitch a tent in the crater."

"By home, I meant the great United States of America. That's where the rock came from, so that's where we're going. We can't risk any other vampires getting their hands on this."

Giles reentered the room. "I've just gotten off the phone with Morgan. The stone is a meteor rock from a town called Smallville, in Kansas. I'm afraid that there's a problem, rather, a, um, 'Big Bad', so to speak."

Several pictures, wet ink still glistening were placed on the table, next to the meteor rock. They were mostly dark shots of a dance club, with one face showing up in every one. The face looked amused, and Buffy wondered what the joke was.

There were a few others. One showed the same guy in a telephone booth, his shirt hanging open, and a scar covering his entire torso glowing an angry red. The last one was the boy sleeping, silk blue sheets all around him, the scar no longer radiating, just normal twisted flesh.

"His name is Kal," Giles said. "Morgan says that he is very dangerous. He briefly resided in Metropolis, the city where Morgan lives, and lived a life of crime. According to Morgan, this boy almost killed him. He's something more than human: stronger and faster; guns are harmless to him. The meteor rock," Giles nodded toward the rock, "weakens him immensely. Morgan suggests that we proceed with caution. He's offered to send his jet over to bring us to the Metropolis airport. We're leaving tomorrow."

Q

Lex Luthor sat at his immense desk, and gazed at the European project files. In it was data on twenty or so girls: information about their strength, speed and agility, tests that had been run on their blood, brain waves and healing capabilities. Once again he read through the verdict of the tests, it was one that was impossible, yet it had been verified by countless of the leading scientists in the field.

These girls were several times faster and stronger than any normal human. He had watched on as they had lifted weight that trained men couldn't have lifted. Their strength increased exponentially when adrenaline was added to their systems.

Their immune systems were much more resilient than normal. They healed at a rate not humanly possible. Yet every single test agreed: they were human, and nothing more. Their DNA was disappointingly normal. Their blood tests came back clean: no drugs in their systems, no mutations in their DNA; even their white blood counts were exactly average.

He had to close the project. These girls could be trained assassins, body guards, or professional thieves with their skills, but they offered no scientific merit. Whatever made them abnormal, whatever made them extraordinary was not physical in nature. It was clear that their advanced abilities could offer no use to society. The more money he put into this project, into funding research and into backing their training school, the more money he lost.

Every project that the girls tackled, they did it with amazing force and efficiency. However, they also did it pro-bono, which gave Lex little to grapple with. If he couldn't make money from a project, then he would have to cut his losses and put his money into a more profitable front.

He had never been so close to a breakthrough before, and it made him sick that there was nowhere to go from here.

Just as he was about to dial the double doors of his office swung open and Clark walked through. Inwardly, Lex rolled his eyes; Clark always was one to make an entrance.

"Project 1138," he said, as way of greeting.

"We dealt with that," Lex said, his frustration making its way into his voice.

"A girl was attacked," Clark explained, "just outside the Talon. She was bitten. She's in the hospital."

"And she's manifesting the same symptoms that those infected with the virus did?"

Clark looked away, shifting his feet awkwardly. "No. She's responding well to the blood transfusions. But what other explanation is there?"

"With the exception of the existence of real, otherworldly vampires," Lex said, sounding amused, "there is none. I'll have some of my people on the lookout. Did you happen to get a look at him?"

"Male, early twenties, blond curly hair… skeletal looking; as if he were starving."

"Before you leave, you better take some of the serum with you. You have a strange habit of finding the bad guy before we do."

As Clark turned to leave, Lex called out, "You seem upset Clark. Is there something else you want to tell me?"

Clark tilted his head towards Lex, his body still facing away, his stance slightly hostile. "I'm just tired of seeing people get hurt," he replied. He turned his face towards Lex. "You can understand that, can't you?"

Q

Clark was drawn back to the hospital; he couldn't get the picture of that girl, ashen and pale, out of his mind. Her skin had been so hold on his arms, and he couldn't imagine that it was possible for doctors to bring the life back into her.

It was still dark out, so Clark raced comfortably in the cloak of darkness, slowing only a few yards in front of the hospital before walking in.

As he approached the girl's room he realized that there was a voice from within, and stopped before the door. He sharpened his hearing, not wanting to walk in on a family member.

"I don't know if you're sleeping, or in a coma… I just had to come here. To apologize, you know. It's a painful thing, having this pounding, whispering _thing_ inside of me, telling me that I'm wrong, that I'm bad; that I should suffer. So I kept away from humans, so I wouldn't feel their hearts beating, and no money to bribe a butcher, so I ate vermin."

Brow furrowed in worry, Clark looked through the walls. It was the monster that had attacked the girl, and he was sitting there, near the windows, as far away from her bed as was possible in the small hospital room.

"Pathetic, I know. As pathetic as Angel, with his brooding and guilt. I stayed away as best as I could, didn't I? But there were whispers among the demon world. Whispers of a stone like the one I found. I came here, to a city, and even at night, when I thought I could be alone, the hunger found me. It can cause a man to go a bit bonkers.

"And you were standing there, all alone, your little heart racing, but I never meant to hurt you. If that bloke hadn't come along, I still would have stopped, because I never could have lived with myself if I hadn't. Price of a soul then, isn't it? Paid quite a price for a woman who could never love me… didn't I?"

Clark flinched as the man stood up, but it looked like he was just heading toward the door.

"I'm sorry. I'm just doing what any murderer with a sudden soul would do… I'm looking for forgiveness."

Q

Patrolling a new city always gave Buffy a new sense of purpose. The enemy didn't know she was here, so she had an extra element of surprise. The vampires always started to pile up in cities that she'd never been to, and big cities like Metropolis were often the worst.

She stared up at the humungous globe atop of the Daily Planet building, mesmerized by its shiny spinning gold-ness. It was then, concentrating on the orb above her, that she allowed all the nighttime city noises to fall away, and found herself focusing on a single, human sound nearby.

It was a scream.

Buffy ran around the side of the building, away from the brightly lit entrance, and into the darkened alleys. She advanced on the screamer: a dark-haired girl who was struggling against a bumpy-browed foe.

"Hey," Buffy yelled, slowing to a more collected pace. "Aren't boys supposed to like blondes better?"

The vampire looked up from the girl's neck. He hadn't bitten yet, and snarled at the intrusion. "Blondes not your thing?" Buffy asked. She was close now, her fingers curled tightly around the stake in her purse. "Maybe you'd like to at least earn your meal."

The vampire pushed the other girl away and punched at Buffy. She blocked his punch and countered with a kick to his head. A few well placed punches later Buffy had him pinned against a wall.

"It's not nice to prey upon little girls," Buffy hissed. She spun the stake in her fingers before grasping it deftly and plunging it into his chest. The dust fell around her like the aftermath of an explosion.

"Oh God," the girl said. She was sitting on the ground, just below Buffy, and she was shaking. Buffy offered her a hand.

"Are you hurt?" Buffy asked. She never enjoyed the end bit of saving people, which is why she preferred to patrol cemeteries. She could pick the vampires off like flies and never having to worry about accepting thanks from the helpless victims.

"No," the girl said, shaking her head. "No, but, God… it all seems so… familiar."

"It was a vampire," Buffy said. "You've seen one before?"

"Seen one… no, I was one."

Buffy laughed. "Was, like past tense?"

"Yeah, but I was cured."

"No, you see, being vamped isn't something you can be cured of. It's kind of… eternal-y."

The girl looked at Buffy with slanted brown eyes. "How did it just… turn into ashes like that? How did you fight it like that?"

"I'm the Slayer—a Slayer, I mean. Killing vampires is kinda what I do."

"This vampire… the one you just killed, it wasn't like the kind that I was."

"I'm thinking not."

The girl looked at her for a while longer, her eyes questioning. Buffy was starting to get impatient. She didn't save people to have conversations with them. She imagined herself, briefly, able to disappear into the night like Batman could. However, though she was strong and fast, she couldn't fly.

"My name's Lana Lang."

"Buffy. Buffy Summers. I'll walk you home if you'd feel safer. Then, you can explain to me exactly what kind of vampire you were."

Lana nodded. "I can tell you what I know, but I can't remember much. After having that thing attack me though, I feel suddenly very grateful that it's all a blur. I can't imagine the terror I must have caused people."

Buffy looked up, and just over the towering building she could see the globe. She remembered the time that she had tied up her friends and almost left them for dead. "We all have that feeling, sometimes."

Q

As Spike exited the room, he felt a sudden rush of relief. If he couldn't see the girl anymore, if he didn't force himself to look at the damage he had caused, then he didn't need to think about it. He could let himself lapse back into that desperate insanity that he had been enjoying since he had left Las Angeles over a year ago.

"Hey," he heard, and an arm grabbed him from behind. Immediately, Spike made to strike, but despite his recent meal, he was still weak from his prolonged starvation. He stumbled, and looked up to see big green eyes in an angel's face.

"It's okay," the boy was saying. Spike could barely focus on him, his vision was becoming hazy; all the lights were too bright in the background. "Listen, we can cure you."

"Cure…" Spike muttered. "No, I can't be cured."

"You can be. I have the cure; I can make you human again."

Spike's eyes opened wide. "Human? You're… you're the Shanshu?"

The boy frowned, but he was reaching into his jacket pocket, and for a hallucinogenic moment Spike saw a magic, glowing wand, ready to put the humanity back into him. Surely, he deserved it. Angel had signed away his Shanshu, and Spike was the only ensouled vampire left.

And then it was plunged into his chest, and Spike screamed in pain. He could feel the sharp metal all the way into his heart, and the skin and tissue around it swelled. He could feel himself getting stronger, the wounds in his mouth healing; his shaking quelled. He had felt this powerful only once before: the brief time that he had worn the gem of Amara. It was liberating, it felt wonderful… but it did not feel human.

The feeling was gone as quickly as it had come, and he was left, feeling frightened and disoriented. He pulled the needle out of his chest and stumbled away. The boy, the one that had promised him Shanshu, he did not follow.

Q

Twenty young women stared up at her. They were violent, rebellious and skeptical, just like Buffy had been when she had been younger. They were itching for action, and Buffy didn't doubt that they'd find it here.

"Only once before have we encountered something with these properties," Buffy began. "It was a ring that was dug out of the ground and worn by the vampire called William the Bloody, or Spike. I'm sure you've all read about him.

"When Spike wore that ring, he was impossible to slay. The sunlight didn't affect him. When staked, he healed back up instantly. We thought that the gem of Amara was the only one of its kind, but it turns out we were gravely mistaken."

She pulled out the meteor rock and held it up to them.

"The gem was a fraction of this size. And, according to Morgan Edge, there is a lot more of it. Two meteor showers worth, all of it in Smallville; this is where we're headed.

"I want half of you to stay here in Metropolis. There are no other towns on any other sides of Smallville, so the vampires will need to pass through here in order to get to the town. I want you on nightly patrols to thin the flow of vampires into the actual town itself.

"Giles' friend, Morgan Edge, will be providing you with hotel rooms. Once a week we'll meet to make sure that everything is going smoothly."

Buffy turned around to face the bulletin board she had set up earlier. On it was pictures of the biggest danger that they had to face: the demon Kal.

"He's supposed to be in Smallville now, but he's been known to be here, in Metropolis. He's the kind of demon that when you see him, you run. His skin is impenetrable, even by bullets, and he can move faster and stronger than you can imagine. It's unverified, but it's also believed that he can somehow channel fire. His one weakness is, ironically enough, the meteor rock."

Buffy exchanged glances with Willow, who stepped forward. "I've been studying the rock, and it appears that whatever powers the rocks have, they can be muted, or even extinguished, by a lead covering. Now, I went to the store and bought these cute little lead cases. You can break up that rock into little pieces and keep it with you when you patrol. This way, the vamps still die, but if the Big Bad comes a-knockin' you can whip out your secret weapon."

"Giles rented us a couple cars," Buffy said. "Those of you that are continuing to Smallville should get packed up and ready to go in a few hours. Dawn? We're leaving earlier with Xander and Willow so that we can get everything set up for us at Central Kansas University. The rest of the girls will squish into a van with Giles."

As soon as it was clear that Buffy was done, the girls broke into conversation, all of them up and moving around, antsy from being in one small hotel room for the morning. They all grabbed for pictures of the demon, as well as the lead boxes, and they took it upon themselves to start smashing up the meteor rock.

Giles arrived shortly after and let them know that he had rented them a house in Smallville, using the residual funds from the American company that had been sponsoring their school.

During the three hour drive from Metropolis to Smallville Dawn had time to look over the pictures that Buffy had given her. She couldn't get over how gorgeous he was, and after careful speculation, decided that it was the bad in him that made him so attractive to her. She thought of Angel and Spike, both of whom had been murdering soulless monsters before she knew them. If looks correlated with the extent of badness, Dawn thought, then this demon, this Kal, must be the worst of all of them.

Q

The campus of Central Kansas University was hardly impressive when compared to the University of Ferrara, the school that Buffy and Dawn had been attending in Italy. Buffy had gotten as far away from Dawn as possible, clearly embarrassed to be starting school in the same year as her baby sister, and so Dawn was left to find her classes herself.

She carried the campus map and the folded picture of Kal, armed with the little lead case in her pocket. She was terrified that she'd be eaten by the demon, but somehow reassured by the academic surroundings: surely this was the last place a demon would—

She stared. Hands shaking, she pulled the picture out from under the map and studied it, and then looked up at the boy in front of her. He was sitting on a bench, reading a textbook in a decidedly non-evil way. He looked up briefly, saw her map-holding nervousness, and started walking towards her.

"Are you lost?" he asked, smiling reassuringly. She could barely think, he was advancing on her, he was going to kill her, right here on campus, her free hand darted into her pocket—he was even more pretty in person. She folded the picture, doing her best to utilize her fingers with the lead case held firmly in her palm.

"Well," Dawn said, doing her best to smile, "yeah. It's my first day; I just transferred from Ferrara U."

"I haven't heard of that University; is it around here?" he asked, and he sounded so genuinely curious.

She shook her head. "Italy. No offence, but Kansas is less exciting," she lied. This was the most excitement she'd had since Sunnydale had become a crater; here she was, making small talk with a demon. She looked at his skin—it looked so normal; it was sneaky, not letting anyone know for a minute that bullets would ricochet off.

"I've heard that before," he said. "I'm Clark." He held out his hand. Nervously, Dawn shuffled the lead case into the same hand as the map, and she shook his hand.

"I'm Dawn."

"Where are you trying to get to, Dawn?" he asked.

"Freshman history," she said.

He smiled. "I'm going there too. I'll show you the way."

"Awesome," she replied, her voice squeaking. "I just need to make a phone call. I'll only be a minute."

Q

When Clark had noticed the girl staring at him, it had shocked him how scared she looked. He stood up and moved toward her, and thought of something to say that wasn't as obvious as, "Is the world about to end?" He offered to show her to class, and when she moved away to make a phone call, he couldn't help but be curious.

"Buffy?" she said into the phone, her voice betraying her anxiety. "Buffy, I found him."

"You found him," another voice replied, "Kal?" Clark eyes widened as he heard his Kryptonian name. "Listen, stay where you are. Are you hurt?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Dawn assured her. "He's not like that guy said at all. He's so… normal. Nice, friendly, I mean, he offered to show me to my class."

"Stay away from him, Donny," the other girl, Buffy, said. "Giles said he was dangerous; murderous even. I don't want you risking—"

"Buffy, I'm letting him show me to class," Dawn interrupted. "I'm going to history; it's at Lymman's Hall. He'll be there too, so you can meet me there. I don't want you storming in; you can't ruin my first day of class, again."

"That was years ago, Dawn; I had good reason—"

"Okay, Buffy, bye!"

Clark was on the verge of panic. His father's words circled in his head: Stay calm, act normal, betray nothing. So he showed her to class, flinching at her nervous laugher, and wondering how her and the other girl could have gotten the idea that he was a dangerous murderer, but most of all, terrified of where they had learned his name.

Q

Buffy couldn't concentrate on what her professor was saying. She was nervous for Dawn, and was worried about the confrontation that would doubtless occur after class. She hoped that they didn't have to fight, because she somehow didn't believe that her limited weapon resources would be effective against a guy that a ton of machine guns couldn't beat.

So she started out peacefully, and hoped that it would progress positively from there. She waited outside the classroom, and as Dawn passed, she slipped Buffy the bit of meteor rock.

Clark watched this transaction and squinted at the box, trying to see what was inside. Whatever the box hid, it hid it completely: the box was made of lead. Dawn continued walking; glancing behind her a few times before she disappeared around the corner. Clark tried not to make eye contact with the short blonde girl, but she stepped directly into his path.

"We need to talk," she said.

They retreated into an empty classroom, both stony faced, revealing nothing.

She spoke first. "It's Kal, right?"

Clark stiffened. "How do you know that name?"

Buffy put her bag down on a table and pulled a pile of paper out of it. "A friend of a friend told me that if I came to Smallville, you'd be the one to try to stop me. He took these pictures."

Clark stared; the pictures were of him while he had been in Metropolis, in vivid colour: him in the phone booth, face bunched with pain, shirt torn open and chest glowing; him sleeping in his 8,000 threat count silk sheets; him with an anonymous girl in a club. "It was Morgan Edge," he said, looking up at her. She looked tense. She didn't look threatening.

"What do you want from me?" he asked, revealing some of his tension in his voice.

She looked shocked. She shook her head, looking incredulous. "Nothing."

There was a brief silence, and Buffy looked at this boy, this demon, with confused disbelief. She didn't see any threat in his eyes. She couldn't imagine someone looking so… scared, if anything.

"You said that I'd try to stop you," he finally said. "Stop you from what?"

Looking from the photos to the boy in front of her, she tried to piece this together. It was like looking at two completely different sides of the same person. She gathered the photos and put them back in her bag.

"Saving the world," she answered. She hesitated before continuing. "It's what I do."

She turned to leave, keeping her head turned so that she could see him from the corner of her eye. "So… so you're good, now?"

Clark raised his gaze from the table, where the incriminating pictures had been, to the blonde girl. He looked sad, like his guilt was weighing heavy on his conscience. Buffy had seen that look before—in Angel.

"Yes," he said softly. "I'm good."

"I've heard legends about your power," she said quietly, "and power corrupts; the possibilities eat away at you. There's not one person that I know that has been blessed with power, who hasn't tried to destroy the world at some point." She twisted back toward him, and met his eyes for a moment before she said, "Forgiveness comes with time. That includes forgiving yourself."

Clark's face remained unyielding, but for one second, when she saw guilt wash down his face.

"I guess I'll see you around, then," she said, and Clark watched her walk away, her words reverberating in the empty room.


	2. Chapter 2

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Two 3910

"You're saying that she knew everything?" Martha asked.

Clark looked up from his cleaning and met his mother's eye. "No, it seemed more like she didn't know anything. Like someone had just handed her those pictures and said, 'watch out for this guy.'"

"What were the pictures of, Clark? When were they from?"

Clark hesitated before answering. "Metropolis. I wasn't very careful during those months."

"Did she threaten you? What did she want? We need to talk to your father, here, take out the garbage—" The front door of the Talon crashed open, stopping Martha mid sentence. Two figures hobbled in through the door, one of the visibly dragging the other.

"You're closed, aren't you?" a familiar voice said. "Everything in this town closes so early. I mean, I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing, the town where I used to live was pretty small too, but not nearly small enough to be called Smallville. I'm really sorry, do you mind if we sit in here, just for a minute? I can… I can help clean up or… something…"

Her voice tapered off as she met eyes with Clark. Clark's mouth fell open. His mother was rushing forward, asking questions, pulling up chairs, and Clark just stared. It was far too strange for this to be a coincidence. He half heard her story—a mugging—and continued to glare at her as his mother ran to go get ice.

The other girl looked pretty bruised, like she'd been in a fight: the losing side. The blonde—Buffy—was muttering to her and stroking her hair.

"I did everything like I've done a million times before," the younger girl was whispering. She had an accent, Irish, or Scottish, maybe. "The head and the heart, just like you've always said."

"I know, sweetie, its okay," Buffy replied. She looked up at Clark, the boy statue, and then back at her companion.

"She should go to the hospital." Martha was back from the back room, with a bag of ice. She wrapped it in a tea towel and placed it on the girl's eye. Buffy held it in place, but she shook her head at Martha.

"Don't worry about it. She's a strong girl; she'll be as good as new by the morning." Clark watched as the two girls exchanged a glance, and then they stood up, the injured one standing by herself now. "We better head home though. Thank you for your hospitality."

"You barely rested for a minute," Martha protested. "At least let Clark walk you home. You'll be safer with him along."

Buffy looked at Clark for a long moment. "Maybe so," she said quietly. "But we'll be fine."

They were out the door for almost a minute before Clark saw the bag lying on the table. He sighed and grabbed the bag. He jogged out of the Talon and listened—he could hear heavy breathing from just around the corner. They were running. Clark followed, and caught up to them—the injured girl was running slightly ahead, and Buffy was behind, her body tensed, arms stiff, eyes watching everywhere but behind.

Clark grabbed her arm and she spun, and something sharp crashed into his chest, sending a jolt of pain through his body and splinters of wood into the air.

"Ow," Clark exclaimed. Buffy took a step back, regarding Clark with horror. "You forgot your purse."

He held it out, and she gaped, before replying, "I am so sorry, I could have killed you—"

She watched, shocked, as he let out a groan and slumped to the floor. "That was a bit of a delayed reaction," she quipped. "If you're just trying to play the sympathy card, you're wasting your…" The sound was nearly imperceptible, but her Slayer hearing was sharper than a normal human's. It was the sound of a soft landing from a moderate height, and the turned to see the vampire that had attacked earlier. She had come up on the vampire while it had been nearly beating Samantha to death, and she had knocked it into some construction supplies, which had collapsed on top of him, buying them some time.

Suddenly she understood: Kal had collapsed, not because of her accidental staking, but because of the stone that made the vampire un-slayable. It had weakened him, left quaking on the wet pavement, and leaving her alone, without a stake, to protect both him and her feeble Slayer.

She whirled, ducking punches and delivering blows, all fluid motion. The vamp she was fighting was not strong, or graceful. He moved like a badly oiled machine, but the problem was just that: like a machine, he would never tire. His clumsy blows kept coming, and Buffy knew that her blows were futile.

So she ran, but this time not away. Once she was far enough she launched herself at him, knocking him to the ground. She rained punch after punch down on him, watching as his head jerked to each side, as far as his spine would allow. She could hear bones breaking, and teeth shattering, but she kept on hitting him until the skin on her knuckles split and began to bleed too. Finally, when she stopped, the vampire was still.

From across the alley, Buffy could hear Kal stirring.

She ripped open the vampire's shirt, but there was no stone hidden there. With a grunt of frustration she moved downward, and saw, with relief, where he had stashed it.

It was sewn into his belt buckle. She tore his belt off and ripped the stone from it. It glowed as she held it close to the vampire; faded into the shadows as she held it away. She swung, with all of her remaining strength, and ground it into the concrete. A shock wave moved, like a ripple, away from the site where the stone had once been.

Clark lay on his side, watching this girl—was it possible that she was only a girl?—fight. There was kryptonite nearby, and it immobilized him. He felt sick, watching her sit on top of this man, punching him until his face no longer resembled something human.

And then, suddenly, the pain, the nausea was all gone, and he pulled himself to his feet.

"Samantha," Buffy said, sounding exhausted, sounding disgusted, "Finish him."

The other girl limped from the shadows, holding a pointed wooden stick in her hand. She spat on the man's crippled body, and then kneeled next to him. She plunged the stick into his chest, and Clark gasped as he turned to dust.

Q

"In the past week, Clark, they've found two just like it: the same strange MO, the same lack of explanation from the police. It's the same as what those Tri Psi girls were doing; the bodies have been found, completely drained of blood, with only two puncture wounds on their neck as evidence. It has to be that virus."

The autopsy picture stared up at Clark; he could remember Chloe lying in that hospital bed, the holes in her neck taped up, the prognosis grim. He thought about the night before last, watching that girl being drunk from; and last night, the injured Samantha spitting on the creature before it turned into dust.

But it hadn't been the same creature both times. The one that he had seen had been blonde; crazed. The vampire that Buffy had fought had taunted and jeered; he had been cocky. Clark had seen two of these vampires, not the same at all as the ones that the meteor rocks had created, in as many nights, and he couldn't imagine how many of them must actually be out there.

The blonde one had been so desperate, and when he had plunged the serum into his chest there was something that he asked about. He had asked Clark if he was something… Shanshu.

"Chloe, have you ever heard of Shanshu?"

Chloe looked at him with a frustrated expression. "Some sort of oriental food, I would guess. Can we focus at the problem at hand? These pseudo-vamps seriously need to be stopped."

"What if real vampires exist?" Clark asked quietly. "What if there were vampires other than the ones made by the meteor rocks and the bats? Like, real, mystical, demon vampires?"

Scoffing, Chloe replied, "What we have here is a scientific explanation for something that, at first glance, may seem like something out of _The Inquisitor_. What would make you say something like that?"

Clark moved around her desk, placing his hands on her shoulders and pushing her into her chair. He kneeled in front of her, his face just below hers. Having him so close to her, having him almost holding her like that; it was painful. She had sworn to herself that she would put this crush behind her; she had done everything in her power to alienate herself from him—betraying him to Lionel, pushing herself away when he had finally started a relationship with Lana, even Jimmy was simply a means to an ends, and she still couldn't stop her stomach from dropping when he touched her.

"I saw them," he whispered, "two of them. Their faces change, and," he moved even closer, his voice barely audible, "one of them turned into dust."

"You're sure," she said back, muttering under her breath. She didn't see the need to whisper: there were people all around making enough noise to easily mask a conversation at a normal volume, but it was hard to respond to a person whispering in any other way.

"Chloe, I know what I saw," he said, louder this time. She could see him getting defensive, and, desperately not wanting to give him a reason to move away, she touched his face.

"I believe you," she said.

The relief on his face was evident. "I knew I could count on you, Chloe," he said in a normal tone. He stood up and moved away. Chloe was immediately ashamed of how upset she was that he was no longer near her. "You'll look up that word for me? Shanshu?" He asked.

She nodded and watched as he walked out of the room. Sighing, she turned to her computer and started looking into the meaning of the word. She had no idea how to spell it and knew that the research could take hours, but for Clark, she'd gladly let her deadlines suffer.

For Clark, she'd do just about anything.

Q

Buffy got out of her car and gazed cautiously around the yard. There was a barn, a picket fence and a yellow house. There were cows in a field. It all seemed so peaceful.

Walking up to the front door of the yellow house, Buffy knocked softly. It was a little bit later than many people stayed up, especially in farm country, where most people rose with the sun to complete their chores. A rugged, middle-aged man answered the door.

"Hi," she said, awkwardly. "Buffy," She said, in way of explanation. She held out her hand, and, slightly confused, the man shook it. "I'm looking for Clark."

"He's in the barn," the man said. "Are you a friend of his?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "From school. Do you mind if I…" She gestured ambivalently in the direction of the barn.

"Sure, go ahead," he replied.

The barn was dark, except for a light hovering up near the ceiling. As she neared, she saw that it was a loft, and she climbed the staircase, slowly, tensed in case something jumped out at her, like an owl or a horse. Barns could be dangerously unpredictable.

The boy, Kal—Clark, was sitting on a couch, his legs stretched out in front of him, a book propped on his lap. There were papers sprawled on a coffee table in front of him, boxes around him and a telescope pointed out of a large hole in the wall. He looked up as she came up the stairs, and from the way his expression melted from pleased curiosity to dismay, she could tell he had been expecting someone else.

"I came to apologize," she said. The words tasted a little bit sour in her mouth—she was the Slayer, the Chosen One, and she was not used to apologizing. "And to explain."

"What was that thing?" he asked. "Last night, in the alley; it turned to dust."

"For a demon," she said, "you're not very well affiliated with the evil side of the tracks."

"I'm not a demon," he protested.

"Well then, I've no idea how you did that chest glow-y thing," she said, pulling a pile of paper from her bag. She held them out to him, and the first page was a picture of him, face strained in pain, in the telephone booth. "I figured you'd like to have them back. I thought you'd feel better with them out of circulation."

"Circulation?" Clark asked, his stomach sinking in dread. She had known that this girl had known, and that her friend, Dawn, had known too, but how many others might she had told? "How many people know?"

"Twenty or so of my girls," she replied. Clark pushed himself up from the couch, walking toward the window, running his hand nervously through his hair.

"Why?" he asked, sounding resigned to the worst. He should have been more careful in Metropolis, he berated himself; he should have been more subtle. If he hadn't attracted the attention of Morgan Edge, the largest leader of organized crime in the city, then he wouldn't be looking at these incriminating photos of himself. He wouldn't be dealing with this girl's assumptions and the risks of someone else knowing. _Twenty_ people knew in a matter of days, and any one of those people could be just about to tell; they could be planning his exposure.

Anger darted across Buffy's face. "It should be obvious," she said. "When a friend of a friend turns up and says, 'this guy here, in the picture, is going to kill all of you if you venture near Smallville,' there's no way that I don't turn up prepared. I don't care if you're little secret is ousted if you're going to kill us anyway. I educate my girls; I prepare them, because in our world, if you don't know your enemy then you're dead.

"They were told you were dangerous: that you're fast, strong and bullet-proof. They don't know who you are or where you live, or even your real name, Clark." She couldn't help but be disappointed—instead of a demon ready to give her a decent fight, she had found a scared little boy, worrying about someone finding out about his stronger half.

"I told them that I dealt with you," she said. "Dealt with you-dead."

Clark watched her from across the room. He finally crossed to the coffee table where she had thrown the pictures. He picked up the one of him in the phone booth and stared at it, seeing a different era in his life, a chapter he had hoped to have put behind him indefinitely.

"Before," Clark finally said, "you said that you were here to save the world." He crumpled the picture in his fist before letting it drop to the ground. "It has something to do with that creature you killed, doesn't it? Was it a vampire? People in Metropolis are dying; can you tell me what's doing it?"

Buffy smiled, and for the first time Clark saw her as a person, instead of this looming threat hovering over his head. "I can do better than that. Bring me to the Smallville cemetery."

Q

The two of them wandered between the graves, the blue moonlight filtering through the trees. "The cemetery is the best place to find new vampires," she said, "which can be good and bad. A newborn vamp is blinded by their hunger. They don't see us as people, they see beating hearts. Since they're new, they haven't adjusted yet to their newfound strength and agility. That's where we have our advantage."

"How do you know where they're going to come up?" Clark asked, his eyes skimming the quiet yard.

"We wait. Sometimes I get creative and picnic-y, or bring my homework with me, because sometimes the vamp never shows."

Clark squinted at the ground, and the grass melted away, revealing dirt and rocks and skeletons. He scanned as far as he could see, and then saw movement.

He adjusted their wandering so that they were aimed toward it.

"You haven't asked the most important question yet," Buffy said. "You should want to know how to kill them."

Clark looked over at her, and he could see her, the other night, on top of that man, punching until his face disappeared under a film of blood. He couldn't imagine ever being that violent, so primal.

"I don't kill," he said.

"It's not killing, technically," she said. "I mean, that's why we're in the cemetery. When a vampire is sired, they are dead already. No heart beat, no soul; that's why when you stake them, or cut off their heads they turn to dust. They aren't living, because they already died; and you can't kill something that's already dead."

The skeleton was squirming under the soul, about three feet from the surface, and Clark stopped just in front of the grave.

"You're strong," he said. "I watched you fight that thing."

"You seem to be pretty strong yourself," she replied, "except for the whole falling over deal-y. I mean… you shattered my stake."

He didn't say anything. He didn't want her any closer to his secret than she had to be, and any acknowledgement that she was right seemed like too much of a giveaway.

"The falling over," she said softly, "it was because of the rock that the vampire had, wasn't it?"

Clark pointed. "There," he said, just as a hand rose out of the dirt. Buffy tossed the wooden stick at him, and he caught it, looking surprised.

She pointed at her left breast. "That's where the heart should be."

Clark continued to watch as the vampire pulled itself out of the ground. It was a woman, dressed in somber black, mud clumped in her long hair. She snarled and Clark recoiled as her face changed into the bumpy vicious mess he had seen on the blonde vampire.

"It's called their game face," Buffy called, backing away. "They're stronger and faster when they're in that form."

Standing stiffly, holding his ground, Clark watched as the first blow came. He let it hit him, across the face, and was surprised by the force that it carried. Clark moved at normal speeds, not wanting to let Buffy see what he was capable of. He could have moved so quickly that neither the vampire nor Buffy would have seen him, rushed forward and staked the monster without a hint of warning, but he didn't even know this girl standing behind him. He didn't want her to know him.

He ducked the next punch and hit back, softly though, a mere fraction of his strength. The vampire's head snapped to the side, and before she had a chance to regain her balance, Clark moved in for his strike.

The stake sank deep into her chest, but instead of vanishing in a whirl of dust, she just screamed.

"It's basically inevitable," Buffy said. "They always miss the heart on their first try."

Clark turned to look at her, annoyed, and almost missed the sound of parting air as a kick rushed toward him. He caught the leg, still glaring at Buffy, and twisted, sending the vamp to the ground. He pulled out the wayward stake and tried again. This time, with a shriek of rage, she vanished into dust.

"You knew where she was going to come up," Buffy said, holding out her hand to take her stake back. "You could feel it? Or do you have x-ray vision or something?"

He shook his head. "Thanks for the lesson in vampire killing—"

"Slaying," she corrected. "It's called slaying."

He nodded, clearly not worried about the specifics, and continued, "But I'm just looking for answers."

She smiled. "We all are, though, aren't we?"

"These are the things that are killing people in Metropolis," he said.

"It's going to get worse," she said vaguely.

"The reason they're here," he said, "it's because of the meteor rocks."

"It makes them unstoppable. Sunlight, stakes, beheading; nothing can stop them."

She looked scared, and Clark moved toward her, touching her arm. "They'll kill—"

"Everyone," she said slowly. "Unless they get smart; then they'll imprison people like cattle. I used to be the only one stopping them from doing that under normal circumstances, but now they hold all the cards."

Clark felt something in him tighten. The last thing he should be doing was getting involved in other people's problems. This vampire slaying, it had nothing to do with him. If anything, he was a liability, since the very rock that made the vampires invincible turned him into a writhing, useless mass.

However, the very root of their problem, the meteor rocks that had arrived with him so many years ago, and then again recently, _were _his problem. He had always felt responsible for the people that the meteors had killed, the ones that had been changed by the meteors, and had charged himself with protecting the people in Smallville from the violence of those driven mad or mutated by the rocks.

So now, this completely different world, a world where vampires and demons killed people and where a powerful woman claimed liability for protecting the world from them, this world was his now; it was here, and it was overwhelming.

And he couldn't stand idle as people died.

So he put aside his insecurities and misgivings, and said, "I want to help."

Q

She could feel the stars looking down on her; could hear them singing to her, urging her forward. She gazed up in amazement as the stars began to cry, shedding glorious explosions and firework tears.

"The sky is falling on top of me," she said softly. "The noises shake me, rocking and rocking me; my lullaby shakes me to sleep." She spun around, lifting her hands to the sky. "Each and every dream is coming true, for everyone."

Her hand crept to her mouth, caking in dried blood. "They didn't like my dancing, did they, Parker?"

The boy—young; barely out of the grave—touched her chin fondly, wiping some of the blood off. "They loved your dancing," he said, gesturing to the empty bodies on the ground, "and so did I."

"You say these things," Drusilla said, sounding astonished, "but I can feel your trembling lies. When you came to me you said you wanted to live for the day. You begged for the wandering freeness of the Gods."

The boy did not reply.

"They were little beasties, all of them," she explained. "Every girl you dragged away to have a little poke, they were beasties. Especially the one," she let out a growl, and Parker flinched away from her. "Especially the Slayer."

"You didn't know, then," she asked. "You can't even feel her here, can you? Her stench rolls off her and it coated you the same way it did my little Spike."

A man from the floor whimpered and rose to his elbows, dragging himself along the ground. Drusilla glided towards him and embraced his trembling head. "I came here; I traveled far. She took my family away from me: Angelus and Darla and Spike. We had a second chance to be a family again, and she came again, her bulging eyes and tiny waist, and she took it away.

"The rocks aren't far from here; they chant my name and promise me greatness. I can hear them saying that I'll be a Goddess. When I am, I know who I want to dance with."

She placed her hands on her chest, caressing the place where her heart used to beat. "A heart that doesn't beat can't spread stench like soft butter. She steals from me my family… so I shall steal from her hers'."


	3. Chapter 3

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Three 5056

In the dark basement of the Daily Planet, Chloe continued to work feverishly into the night. Her dedication to the job and her desperate need to do more than screen news that wasn't fit to print had her juggling her schoolwork with her strange hours at the Planet.

The phone rang, and she picked up, saying, "Daily Planet info line… obituaries, sure, let me transfer—oh, dog obituaries. Sorry, we don't run them." She sighed and hung up, before pushing her chair away from her desk to talk to Lois, who was emphatically shooting aliens on a neighboring computer.

Chloe couldn't help but wonder what Lois was doing there, and when she voiced this Lois admitted that she needed help moving. Chloe laughed, and assured her that she was always willing to help her.

The phone rang again, and Chloe groaned before getting out of her chair and crossing the room to answer it.

A woman, sounding scared, said, "I need a reporter to meet me."

"Who is this?" Chloe asked, frowning at the receiver.

"I want to talk to a reporter," the girl repeated. "You have to send someone fast, before he finds me. 7th and Edgemont; please, you've got to hurry."

Chloe, perplexed but mostly excited about having a potential story, grabbed her jacket and gestured for Lois to follow her.

When they arrived at the interception that the girl had indicated, they climbed out of Chloe's bug and were greeted by the warm, thick smog of downtown Metropolis and the offensive noise of a train overhead. They walked into the dark alley ahead of them, lit only by the light of a phone booth, and suddenly a girl came running toward them.

She waved her arms, limping slightly from her high heel shoes, and called, "Please, someone help me!" Out of the shadows behind her came a shape, moving much faster than she was. It grabbed her from behind, and Chloe gasped as the sound of breaking bone echoed through the street. The figure, it looked like a man, threw hid head back and let loose a noise like a deranged growl, before leaning forward, burying his head in the woman's neck.

"Chloe," Lois said, "I think we should leave."

"No, Lois, we need to help her—"

"We can help a lot better if we're not dead," Lois pointed out. She flinched as they watched the man throw the girl aside; she crumpled onto the concrete. He then turned and walked back into the shadows from which he had come.

Q

"This is far more serious than one unemployed, uneducated girl dead on the streets, Miss Sullivan," Officer Sawyer. "She was far from the only one killed. The club that she was outside of was a slaughterhouse. We're dealing with a mass murderer and all you can tell me is that she ran toward you and something or someone attacked her from behind, snapped her neck with his bare hands, and then ran off into the shadows. No description; and an MO that defies human logic."

She smiled grimly at the two girls and continued, "It's not possible for a human to just snap another human's neck."

"It is possible," Chloe protested. "The person drank that woman's blood; we saw it. The superhuman strength, the cannibalism: it's characteristic of a disease that has been in the area recently."

"You're telling me that a disease exists that makes people strong and blood-thirsty?"

Chloe nodded. "I have a detailed report on the virus; I covered it a week ago when a friend of mine became infected. I can get you all the information I have on it."

Officer Sawyer stared at her for a minute, every hardened cop bone in her body straining against accepting help from this juvenile reporter-in-training.

"Have it faxed to my office, Sullivan. I don't want the two of you looking into this; you do your job, and I'll do mine."

Q

"I did my daily hacking of the Metropolis police reports," Willow said, craning her head to see Buffy from behind the training equipment, "and I found something interesting. Come hither to behold the massacre, very obviously the work of vampire or vampires unknown."

Buffy started to make her way from the kitchen to the room where Willow was camped out, amongst the punching bags, balance beams and free weights. One of the girls was abusing the punching bag, and Dawn had pitched a tent out of bed sheets, using several dueling staffs as posts, and was writing an essay while humming loudly. Pop-metal music wailed from a stereo balanced on top of the stair banister.

"At a club, called the Windgate club, there were almost fifty people found dead: a whole bunch of strippers, but also some pretty high class citizens, including one Senator Jennings. A few of them were found drained of blood, with double puncture wounds on their necks. Many of them had snapped necks… a few of them were apparently tortured before they were killed; some of them were cut up pretty badly, a few missing fingers, one of them was drowned…"

"Hm," Buffy commented, "it sounds more like they were out for some soul-less fun times than for a meal. This isn't your average vampire—vampires hunt to eat for the most part: they're all instinct, primal, like animals. This kind of killing, as if it were an art, something to prolong and appreciate… it's more like something that… well…"

"Angelus," Willow suggested. "It's just like Angelus."

Buffy shook her head. "No. The last I heard from Angel he was—"

"Heading up the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart?"

"I just thought he was misguided, straying into the grey area of doing good," Buffy said softly. "I thought maybe we couldn't trust him anymore, that he had given into temptation, but the old fashioned way. I never imaged that he might have lost his soul again."

"Well, we don't know anything for sure," Willow reassured her. "We can't just assume that it's him. We should get more information, do some re-con."

Buffy nodded. "I'm going."

"No, Buffy," Willow protested. "We've already got girls in Metropolis. We can send one of them. They're probably already at the scene. It's daytime, they're safe."

"Okay, but only because we have so much work to do here," Buffy replied. "We need to find every place where the meteor rocks can be found and have the girls patrolling them. We have to start training them to fight to injure, instead of fighting to kill. Willow, maybe you can think of some sort of… thingie that can detect the radiation from the rocks. We need more long range weapons, so that while they're patrolling the meteor sites they can kill the vamps before they get close enough for the rocks to have an effect."

She paused. "Where's Xander?"

"He's off getting a job," Willow said. "Apparently, in America, money is needed to keep our current way of living… well, off the streets."

"And Giles?"

"Also applying for a job; Kansas U is in need of a new Librarian, and Giles is in need of a new comfort place. I have a feeling that he doesn't like spending his days cooped up with ten restless Slayers and a sexually frustrated lesbian."

Buffy slid into the seat next to her and put her hand on Will's. "You really miss Kennedy, don't you?" she asked. Willow nodded, wrinkling her nose.

"I understand though, why she had to leave. She needed an adventure, and Faith was heading to Cleveland to start work on the Hellmouth there. She didn't need to stay and train, and she's much older than the other new Slayers are."

She smiled a tight-lipped smile and continued, "But that doesn't stop me from missing her like someone hole-punched my middle. I just feel so… empty; so… alone." She laughed softly. "You know how it feels though, right? I mean, we just up and left Italy, and you and the Immortal were…"

"Not so much," Buffy corrected. "The Immortal was a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, but after that stunt he pulled with Angel and Spike; it feels like he just used me to poke fun at his centuries old nemesises… nemeses?"

"That was over a year ago," Willow reminded her. "Why were you stay with him?"

Buffy sighed. "Angel and Spike were both old guys, right?" she started. "But they, above all, lived for the moment. They were all about action and movement. The Immortal, though, he could take hours to look at the sunset. He would spend the whole night admiring my back, or smelling my neck. After the life I lived, being the Chosen One, it was just so relieving. The calm that he had, like he had all the time in the world… because he does, of course… It was so different than living like I was going to die before twenty-five and wanting to fit as much as possible into every minute of every day."

She stood up out of her chair. "And now I'm back to living that way, right, Will? I've got school, I've got saving the world; I have twenty adolescent Slayers and one little sister to take care of. Invincible vampires, green-eyed demons—"

"You said he wasn't a demon," Willow pointed out.

"I said he said he wasn't a demon. The point is that I need to start getting things done."

"Like going to school, maybe?" Willow suggested. She pointed at the wall clock and Buffy swore.

"Dawn? Donny?" she called, grabbing her bag and tripping over a stray dumbbell. She fell into Dawn's tent, and it collapsed around both of them. It took them a few minutes to become untangled from the sheets, but finally the two of them got loaded up into their small rental vehicle, with Dawn stoically behind the wheel—Buffy had vehemently refused to apply for a driver's license.

Q

"Clark? Clark!"

Clark stopped walking and slowly turned around.

"So the ambush continues," Clark remarked. The two girls caught up with him, Dawn panting and far behind Buffy.

"You wanted to help," Buffy reminded him. Clark sighed, and continued walking.

"Listen," he said softly. "No one knows about me; no one. I mean, not my closest friends, even my girlfriend doesn't know. When I said I wanted to help, I meant kind of… on the down-low: at nighttime; when the general public isn't watching."

Buffy pouted. "But we have a day-time mission."

When he didn't reply, Buffy said, "Okay, I'm sorry. How about, for the saving the world cause, we pretend to be friends so that we can be seen non-suspiciously conversing with one another?"

Clark stopped in front of the building that his class was in. Dawn waved and rushed off to her class, but Buffy lingered for a minute longer.

"Hi," she said, holding out her hand. "My name is Buffy, and I'm a totally normal girl. I'm a normal-a-thon, I promise."

Clark let a smile spread across his face, and he grasped her hand firmly. "I'm Clark; I'm just a normal Kansas farm boy."

Buffy grinned, and she couldn't help it—she was more than a little dazzled by his smile. His green eyes shone and the smile was so honest, so revealing.

"I knew it," she said. "So now, we can start over."

Q

Xander wandered through the halls of the Luthor mansion. It seemed familiar to him, and it took him a few minutes to realize why: the mansion that he had helped to restore and move to Italy, from Scotland, had been one of the houses on the Luthor estate. They had been using it as the Slayer training school, as well as a place for the Luthorcorp scientists to work.

It had been Giles' idea to affiliate themselves with such a company; Lex and Lionel Luthor were well known for their intense curiosity into the unexplainable, and every Slayer woman was the epitome of just that. Giles had been good friends with a rich American, Morgan Edge, during his demon-summoning days, and he had been able to set up a meeting with Lex Luthor.

Xander remembered the first meeting with Mr. Luthor. Buffy had been the spoke's person, speaking quickly and in a commanding tone, not betraying anything near the extent of what she really knew. No mention of vampires or demons or witches; never slipping up and saying "Slayer" or "Chosen One". She lay down strict rules for the research and presented her demands without leaving window for compromise. Lex Luthor had been entranced; as if what he had been looking for his whole life had been laid out in front of him.

It had been strange to watch this collected man become so frustrated each time they came to visit and the scientists had found nothing new. Buffy never let them know why they wouldn't find anything different about them—their power wasn't in their DNA, it was in their souls. Their abilities were the result of strength of character, potential and ancient magic. There was nothing scientific about it.

The fact that Buffy had so blatantly used the Luthors for their money had not entirely escaped the notice of Lex. Xander knew how he felt—with discovery so close, how could one throw it away from something as petty as cash flow?

"Mr. Harris," Lex exclaimed as he entered his office. "It's been too long. How are you? How is the eye?"

Self-consciously, Xander touched his eye patch.

"I'm here to ask for a job," Xander said. "We can discuss the procedure another time."

"If you're here, I can't help but assume that Miss Summers and the girls are here too. Are they planning on dropping in for a visit?"

"The girls miss their visits," Xander said. "Though being poked and prodded like lab rats was never the highlight."

Lex laughed. "They were lab rats. It's what they signed on for. In all seriousness, I do need Buffy to come by."

"The Buff-inator will try to clear her schedule. She's a busy girl, which is why I'm here. If I can help bring in some income, it would take some of the strain off of her. I mean, with the training, and the training, she doesn't have time for good old-fashioned fun or even old friends." He gestured to himself.

"I do have a new project, and even while you were in Europe I had you in mind. That you're already here, though why exactly you would be here in as yet unknown, just saves me the cost of a plane ride."

Lex shuffled through the papers on his desk and pulled out a blueprint. "There was recently a meteor shower in Smallville that rendered much farmland in the county barren. I've bought several acres of this land from the farmers and have decided to reopen a project that I had to shut down several years ago: the Smallville mall." He handed Xander a folder, along with the blueprints.

Flipping through the folder, Xander kept his head down as Lex continued. "The first part of the operation went well."

Xander didn't reply. "The medication, I assume, is helping to keep the pain at a minimum?"

"Yes, it's all very well and I just…" he sighed. "It's just that it's experimental, all of it. And I don't want to start getting my hopes up."

Lex reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pill bottle. "These are for the second part; you should start taking them tomorrow. I advise that you try to stay away from people though; you'll be particularly vulnerable to sickness while you're on these."

"Have you set a date yet?"

"Next Wednesday. I'll keep you updated."

They shook hands, and Xander left the office. It was only once he was down the hall that he leaned against a wall opposite a large mirror. His breathing was erratic, and his head throbbed. Hands trembling, he let his fingers pull the patch away from his eye.

He flinched when he saw what was under it. The skin around the area where his eye had been was red and tender. The actual wound itself, though it had healed over long ago, was raw and cut open, and glowing a deep green.

Q

Buffy hesitated before calling out his name. The loft was dark, and from experience, a lack of lights is often an unspoken declaration of the desire for solitude.

He appeared at the top of the stairs, looking stiff and uncomfortable. "Buffy," he said, his voice low and pained.

"Can I come up?" she asked. He shrugged, and then retreated from view. She climbed the stairs and found him standing by the large window, a pained expression on his face, the blue light from the twilight sky painting a sober picture.

"What's wrong?" she asked. He turned to look at her, and it struck her how entirely _sad_ he looked. "Did someone die?" she asked, in a gentle, non-sarcastic way. He nodded.

"Senator Jennings was murdered last night," he said.

"I know," Buffy said softly. "You knew him?"

"Jack was like an uncle to me," he said. "My dad was best friends with him."

Buffy moved closer and touched the hand that was gripping the edge of the window. "I'm sorry." They were silent for a while, staring out at the deep blue sky; the stars were barely visible against the fleeting remains of sunlight in the corner of the sky.

"Why aren't you with your parents right now?" she asked, quietly. "It's not good to be alone at a time like this."

Clark still didn't reply. His head moved slightly; he glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"You seem like a solitary person," she continued. "You're different from everyone else, and it makes you feel like you shouldn't be with them; maybe sometimes you even feel like you're better than them. You feel like people will reject you if you get too close, and when you lose someone you love, it hurts, and only emphasizes that you shouldn't let yourself love like that."

She reached out and touched his face, turning his head towards her. "Am I close?"

Clark let himself contemplate what she had just said, and, more than ever, it seemed exactly right. He could hear himself, in his head, classifying them as _humans_, as _them_. Jack had been killed in a strip club, and more than half of the girls that had been working there, that had been killed, had been underage. He thought about the crimes that had been committed, the selfishness that seemed to control everyone's decisions, and then he considered the decisions he had made. They hadn't always been wise, or right, but he always tried his best.

No matter how hard he wanted to be like them in the fundamental ways, how he wanted to be normal, how he wished that he didn't have these secrets, he couldn't deny the fact that he was born of an advanced civilization.

So he looked at this girl, her brown, heavily lined eyes staring up at him, probing him, and as he opened his mouth to voice his disbelief, a phone rang.

Swearing, Buffy looked through her bag, and Clark could hear wood crashing against wood in her bag, and he thought of the pointy stick she had swung at him.

It had left quite a bruise. He remembered when he had gotten home, taking off his shirt and staring in the mirror for almost a whole minute. When he poked it, it stung slightly, and it had remained purple for an hour before fading to skin colour.

Bullets barely left bruises anymore.

"Buffy, you need to come home," a female voice said from the phone. "It's Spike."

"Spike?" she repeated. Clark could hear a multitude of feelings in her voice—sadness, relief and confusion. She looked up at the ceiling of the barn for a moment. "It must have been Angelus. They were together in LA, and from what we've heard, he might have been going a little evil even with a soul. Have you been able to make him talk?"

"Spike wandered a little bit into crazy land," the girl said, sounding frustrated. "He keeps saying he's going to be made a real boy. The last time I saw him like this is was the First… is that even possible?"

"I dunno, Will, but I'll be right home."

"He keeps asking for you, Buffy. I don't think that his dying and then having a few years to recover did much for his little Buffy-lusty."

"I'll be right home," she said again. "Don't lose him, or provoke him, or anything. Even ensouled Spike gets nasty when he's brainwashed."

She closed the phone and turned back to Clark. "I'm really sorry," she said.

"You were right," he said. "I shouldn't be alone. I can't watch my parents like this though; they have each other right now, they don't need me."

"Did you want… I mean, if you want…" She made a gesture towards the door of the barn.

"Well, if you don't…"

"No, of course not," she said. Awkwardly, they made their way down the stairs.

Q

"Tell me about vampires," Clark said. "Are they all evil?"

"As a rule, yes," Buffy replied. "They don't have souls, and they're essentially hunters: they live for the kill."

"What if a vampire did have a soul? Could it be good?" Clark thought about the vampire he had listened to in the hospital… _'Price of a soul then, isn't it? Paid quite a price for a woman who could never love me… didn't I?'_ the vampire had said. He had been apologizing to the girl he had bitten; he had sounded almost hysterical with guilt.

"Yeah," Buffy said softly. "Then he could be good."

"And what about you?" Clark asked. "What exactly are you?"

"Slayer; the Chosen One," she paused. "Into every generation a Slayer is born. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness."

"Sounds like a lot of responsibility," Clark said. "Have you always known?"

She shook her head. "I was called when I was 15. It was weird," she laughed. "I was just this normal girl."

"I've never been exactly normal," Clark admitted. "At least you know what it was like."

"Maybe," she said. "But this is who I am now. I can barely remember how it used to be."

"You still went to high school?"

Buffy nodded.

"Was it hard for you? To have such a secret?"

"I had a Watcher, Giles," Buffy said. She glanced over at Clark—he was more than a foot taller than her, with these broad shoulders and a chest as hard as a cement wall, but he looked so vulnerable. She wondered what answered he was looking for.

"Giles helped me train; he guided me. I don't know what I would have done without him. My friends were great too: they always stood by me." She was quiet for a second, and then she laughed, short and bitter. "Almost always, at least. That's something."

"So you told people about your abilities?" He sounded astounded, as if telling people was one of those sins that his parents had always warned him about: don't smoke, don't party, no sex, and don't confide in people.

"My good friends knew," she said. Then, thinking about Cordelia, she added, "and some of my not so good friends. By the end of high school just about everyone in our year had some suspicions, I mean, I was awarded the Class Protector award." She smiled fondly at the memory.

"So many people knew, and no one… no one did anything?"

"Like what?"

Clark shrugged and said, "I don't know, try to exploit you, or study you, or betray you to the media?"

"No," she answered shortly. "Is that what you think people will do?"

"It's what I _know_ people will do. I guess my story is a little more on the sci-fi end of the spectrum. It's difficult to study fantasy."

"That is truer than you know," Buffy remarked, thinking of Lex and his frustrated scientists. She gestured to Lana's old house. "We're staying here. Um…" She touched his arm and turned him toward her. "It might get… weird in there. I watched Spike die; I stood at the mouth of the city sized crater where he had been moments before. I mean, someone told me like, a year ago, that he wasn't really dead, but I guess it didn't actually… It's going to be hard to see him again."

Clark remembered his own return-from-the-dead moment, how it had felt to hold Lana in his arms again: the relief, the overwhelming feeling of being home… He wondered how close this man and she had been.

"How did he come back?" Clark asked. They approached the porch, and Buffy noticed that the door was open, and Willow was standing just inside.

"I didn't invite him in, Buff," she called out. "He seems kind of… dangerous."

"I'm not dangerous, love," said a British voice from the shadows. "Just hungry, and I know last time, between you and me, Red, didn't work out, on account of the chip, but you could at least let me have a taste…"

"Spike?" Buffy called. Clark stood back, and watched her rush forward. He recognized the voice, and it took him a minute before he realized—

"Buffy, wait," Clark called out. He rushed forward, the world momentarily standing still around him, and pulled her back. "He's a vampire."

She looked at him like he was nuts. "Yeah, I know. Spike has a soul." She pulled her arm free with surprising force, and climbed the porch steps. The blonde vampire, his hair greasy and curly, was lying down on the porch swing that Clark had so often watched Lana and Whitney sit on. His legs were hanging off either side, and he was rocking back and forth. When Buffy approached, he sat up. The two of them stared at each other, and then, slowly, Buffy held her hand out, palm facing the vampire, fingers spread slightly. Spike reached toward her, and entwined his fingers in hers, flinching slightly, as if he had expected pain or retaliation.

"Spike, get up," Buffy said, sounding kind, but firm. "I want to help you."

Still staring at her as if shocked, he whispered, "No, you don't. But thanks for saying it."

Clark watched this exchange and he wondered if Buffy had been lying to him. This vampire, Spike, he had seen him attacking a girl. Buffy pulled Spike off of the swing and led him inside, and the girl who had been standing in the doorway approached Clark.

"No one really likes Spike," she said. "But Buffy has a soft spot for him. He used to be evil, killed thousands of people, but then he went and got a soul. I guess he hoped that Buffy would love him if he was more of a man." She cocked her head toward the door. "I'm Willow. I'm guessing that you're Kal, or Clark, or whatever name you chose this morning. You can come in if you'd like. Buffy told me that you wanted to help. I'll show you our headquarters."

Q

"Spike," Buffy said softly. "When was the last time you had blood?"

"A few nights ago; it was a girl, but I didn't kill her. That boy that you brought… he's your new squeeze, is he?" Spike's voice was low and raspy. Buffy looked at his smooth, pointed face, and feelings came rushing back. She remembered how she had hated him, despised the way that he made her feel, and then how their friendship had began; how he had been the only one who had stood by her.

"You never doubted me," she whispered. "You were the only one who never doubted me." She placed her hand on his face, and he leaned into it, savouring her touch. "And no, he's not."

"He's not human though, is he? He's some sort of demon half breed?"

"Why would you say that?" Buffy asked. She glanced over at Clark, who was sitting awkwardly with Dawn and Willow amongst the training equipment. She could see that he was watching them out of the corner of his eye. She wondered how much he could hear.

"He pulled me off of that girl, the other night," Spike muttered. "Buffy, I would have stopped, even if he hadn't come—"

"It's okay, Spike," she reassured him.

"He was strong. And when I bit him, I couldn't even puncture the skin. My fangs snapped off like he was a brick wall. Hurt like bloody hell."

"Do they, um," Buffy gestured to her mouth. "Do they, um, grow back?"

"Oh yeah. Within the hour."

"Spike… last time I heard from you, you were with Angel."

"I was wondering how long it would be before we got back to him." Spike sounded bitter, but not surprised. "What is it you'd like to know, lamb? Where is he now? Has he got a new girl?"

"Does he have a soul?"

"S'far as I know. Last I saw him, we were ankle deep in demons, fighting our way out of LA. Got separated, and I haven't heard from him since. Started heading this way when I heard, I mean, every vampire is going to start heading this way when they hear. Thought you'd need backup."

"Thanks, Spike," Buffy said quietly. "We need all the help we can get. You can help the girls patrol the crater sites; the effects of the rocks are the strongest there."

They looked at each other for a while, and Spike couldn't imagine how he had ever got along without her. She was beautiful like nothing he had ever seen before; she glowed like the sun, and burnt almost as badly.

"If it's not Angel," Buffy said, "who is it?"

"In Metropolis? Angelus never would have bothered with strippers or whores. He liked his girls pure." Buffy shuddered, remembering how Angelus had spoken to her; thinking of how Angel had driven girls mad before killing them. "It would have to be Dru," Spike continued. "Killing off beasties is more her style."


	4. Chapter 4

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Four 

"And then," one of the many girls sitting amongst the mess of weights in the living room said, "we're handed these pictures, all of us expecting some hideous bumby headed demon, and instead it's this sexy boy with these smoldering eyes. We're all squished in two hotel beds, talking into the night and we decided that we were terrified. The more beautiful they are the more murderous, tends to be the general rule. I mean, Angelus and Spike are two prime examples."

The rest of the girls nodded in agreement. Pizza boxes littered the room, and Clark sat at the table, grinning sheepishly and protested as the other girls yelled, all of them trying to add their own perspective on the story.

Clark couldn't help but feel comfortable with these people. Usually, he thought, he would have been entirely embarrassed to be doted upon by ten such outgoing girls, but they were all so entirely at home with each other. Willow had explained to him about the powers that they had, and he watched in amazement as they casually demonstrated their abilities.

Spike and Buffy had left a while ago, supposedly to go to the butcher, and Dawn had convinced Clark to stay. She had seemed shy, and had rambled for twenty minutes before the pizza had arrived.

"Anyhow," the loud girl continued, "Buffy told us that she had dealt with you, and we all thought you were dead. But with Buffy, eh," she nudged the girl next to her, "if it's a hot demon, you never know if he'll end up dead, or in bed with her." The girls giggled, and Clark turned pink.

"We didn't, I mean, we never," Clark protested.

"Oh, but you will. The hot evil ones can never resist Buffy's charm," Willow said. She was eating her pizza over her computer, typing awkwardly with one hand and chewing noisily. She gestured for Clark to move closer to her.

"Girls!" she called out. "Eat your food, and then get out. There are streets to patrol, vamps to kill and evil green stones to be destroyed. Giles had a big lead box installed in the basement. Bring the pretty green rocks back here 'til we can figure out how to destroy them on a larger scale."

She turned to Clark. "I'm sorry about the girls. The only boys they've seen in a while have been Giles and Xander, and Giles is, well, old, and Xander is still pining for his dead demon ex-fiancé."

"Does everyone around here date demons?" Clark asked, thinking about the gibe regarding Buffy.

"Just Xander and Buffy, but Buffy dates exclusively vampires in the way of demons. And only two of them, and I don't even know if Spike counts, since it wasn't dating so much as lots and lots of boinking."

"So," she said, putting her pizza back on the table, "what can you tell me about these meteor rocks?"

Clark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "They change people," he started, "give them powers. Usually only when the person is in a near death situation."

"Like how?" Willow asked.

"Listen, my friend Chloe keeps files on all the people that we've encountered who have been changed by the meteor rocks," Clark said in a rush. "I can have her email them to you."

Willow shrugged. "Sounds good to me, but, where do you factor into all of this? I mean, that symbol on your chest, it's not of any hieroglyphic humanoid language that I could find."

Clark stood up, alarmed. "You were looking into it?" he demanded. "Why?"

"Professional curiosity," she said, picking up her pizza again, and taking a bite, seemingly unperturbed. "I do research. It's what I do."

Still tensely standing, ready to bolt or attack, whatever the occasion called for, Clark jerked in surprise when she touched his arm.

"How did you get it?"

He looked down at her, and was surprised by the empathy that shone in her dark eyes. "My biological father was trying to control me," he said. He hadn't really meant to say anything even close to the truth, but something seemed to be compelling him.

She removed her hand and started to type on her keyboard. Using the touchpad on the front of her laptop, she loaded a close-up of the scarring.

"It's a very strange scar," she muttered, and Clark sat down again and looked at the screen. She had brought up several other pictures, all of them of skin deformities, and had superimposed several of them onto the image of his flesh.

"It most closely resembles a burn scar," she explained, "but the irritation around it looks almost like a rash or allergic reaction. I can't explain it." She turned to him, her eyes lingering on the neckline of the flannel shirt. "Can you?"

"No," he said, standing up. "I'll have Chloe drop by with the files."

He turned to leave, but Willow stood up and grabbed his hand. When Clark looked at her he noticed how her eyes were darker than they had been before, her iris and pupil had melded into one.

"It would be helpful if I could see the scar," she said. "Let me see it."

Clark tilted his head to the side as he stared at her eyes. He wasn't sure if the darkness of her eyes had gotten to a point where it was unnatural. "I can't," he said, truthfully. "It's gone."

* * *

After a silent hike to the butcher's (Giles and Xander were still out with their respective cars), Buffy dropped Spike off at the house just as Clark stormed out of it.

"What's wrong?" she called, hurrying after him. He walked into the cemetery that separated their houses, and didn't reply.

She took a running start and dived at him with enough force to drop a large cattle specimen. He barely faltered in his determined walking. She hung on for only long enough for the smell of the back of his neck to make its way to her nostrils, before dropping and hurrying to walk beside him.

"Stop, Clark," she said. "I need to talk to you."

"I don't like this," he said. "Overnight I've gone from four people in the entire world knowing about me, to twenty-four, and people are asking questions and for some reason I couldn't even lie."

"Will put the truth mojo on you, did she?" Buffy asked. "I'm sorry, she shouldn't have done that."

"Mojo?"

"Willow's a witch; a very powerful witch. She almost destroyed the world when she was in her prime." She laughed. "I told you before: there's not a powerful person that I know who hasn't gone kamikaze at one point or another."

Clark stopped walking. "Even you?"

Buffy nodded. "One day I woke up, and I wasn't at home. I was in a hospital, bound to my bed, and they told me that I'd been unconscious, in a paranoid schizophrenic coma for several years. They told me that the world I'd been living in since I'd become a Slayer wasn't real. There were doctors; my mom wasn't dead; my dad wasn't AWOL with his secretary, and they told me that I had a chance at a life now."

Clark frowned. "How is that even possible?" Buffy gestured that they keep walking; the barn was just in view.

"It was some sort of demon spell, but it was so, so real. They told me that the only way for me to wake up, and stay awake, was for me to sever all connections with the world in my head. They told me to get rid of everything that I stayed for."

"What did you do?" Clark asked. He was astonished at the honesty that this girl was offering him. He could tell, by the slight waver in her voice, that it was a painful memory.

"I tied up each of my friends: my sister, Willow, Xander, Spike, and put them in the basement. There was a demon down there, and I untied it."

"What stopped it?"

"I felt better when I realized that I could be a normal girl, but it was painful, you know? Watching them die… it was like losing a part of myself. And no matter how my mother told me that I could do it, that I was strong, that it was okay to be afraid, that she loved me; it made me feel so good to hear my mother's voice again, but I realized that strength didn't mean accepting this world, with all it's promises of a perfect, easy life. It meant knowing which world was real, which world needed me. So, I apologized to my mom and came back to the real world."

When Clark didn't reply, Buffy held up a hand. "I put my fist _through_ the demon. It had goo-y blood."

Clark couldn't imagine waking up and realizing that the world you'd been living in was nothing more than an elaborate dream. The world all seemed so tangible: the cold wind blowing around them, the dark blue moon lighting up the tombstones; this girl, looking so vulnerable.

"Do you think that you made the right choice?" he asked quietly. They were inside the barn now, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Every day," she said, "I think about it. I think about how my mother could be by my side, how the world wouldn't be ending every day; I think about how I could have been normal—no Chosen one, no powers, no agents of darkness trying to kill me. In this world I have responsibilities that most people couldn't even dream of. But, yes. I know that I made the right choice. How could this be anything but real?"

The last sentence caused her voice to squeak, and Clark looked down to see that her eyes shone bright with tears and she looked terrified.

"It must have been so hard," he said.

She shook her head as if she was trying to shake something off, and then looked up at him again. "I know that this is hard for you," she said. "And that you're not used to people knowing what you're capable of. If it makes you feel better, what the girls know about you will stay at a minimum. They can keep thinking that you're some sort of demon spawn, and those girls are trustworthy. They're not going to tell anyone." She grabbed his hand, and he nodded.

"But I need you to trust me," she continued, "because what we're facing here is apocalypse-big. We're talking about vampires that can't be killed, and you know more than you're telling." She frowned. "A lot more, I think."

Clark sighed. He looked away, because he always found it easier to lie when he wasn't looking at the person, but she didn't give him time to speak.

"It's doesn't need to be now; but it needs to be soon. Knowledge is powerful, and we're running dangerously low on it. We're in new territory here, and these meteor rocks are undocumented mysteries. I'm not asking for you to lay your life down for my cause. All I'm asking is that you trust me."

* * *

After pulling slowly down the drive of the Kent farm, Lana realized just how tired she was. As soon as she had heard the news about Senator Jennings, she had planned to drive back to Smallville to see how Clark was, but she had been held up by the intense amounts of Astronomy homework. With any other sort of homework, she would have just packed it up and brought it with, especially considering the distinct lack of touch in their relationship lately, but Clark seemed to be uncomfortable with the topic of Astronomy.

She remembered how he spent almost every night in his loft with his own telescope, watching the stars, planets and galaxies rotate with the seasons, and couldn't figure out exactly what had turned him off of it. She had hoped that studying Astronomy would bring them closer together; help them find some answers. She needed those answers: needed to know where those people who had come out of the spaceship had been; why they had killed so many people; who they were looking for.

"We are looking for Kal-El," they had said.

As she neared the barn door, she realized that voices were coming from inside—Clark was talking to someone.

"…is that you trust me," a girl's voice said.

And then Clark, with only a moment's hesitation, replied, "I do trust you. I don't understand why, but I do. You're right; there is something I need to show you."

Lana walked into the frame of the barn door and watched as Clark grabbed the arm of this blonde girl and started to pull her around, toward the door, and then he stopped.

"Lana," he said.

"Show her what?" Lana asked. As the girl's face came into view, Lana realized that she recognized her.

"Buffy?" she asked. That night in Metropolis came rushing back to her—the taste of fear in her mouth as the man had overpowered her, and the shock as he was pulled back by a girl as small as she was, but many times stronger.

"Er," Buffy said slowly, "it's Lana, right?"

"What are you doing here?" Lana snapped, anger creeping into her voice. Clark was slouching away from Buffy, whose arm he had just been holding, and was looking guilty. She turned to him. "And _what_ were you going to show her?"

Clark straightened himself up, and Lana knew, instantly that he was gearing up for a lie. "I was going to take her to the Kawachee Caves."

"Why?" she demanded.

"I'm here to do research," Buffy interrupted. "We're researching the meteor rocks that landed here, both in the latest meteor shower and in the one more than a decade ago. The caves are an important part of Smallville history. Clark here," she shoved him affectionately, "didn't really want us doing research in the caves. He was afraid we'd hurt them."

Clark nodded along with the story, but to Lana, he looked more surprised than anything.

"She's living in your old house," Clark added, rather uselessly.

"Really?" Lana asked. "Let me drive you home; I'd like to see what you've done with the place."

Without much protest, Buffy loaded into Lana's SUV, and braced herself. This was the prodigal girlfriend, and though Buffy had saved her life, she didn't think that her past good deeds held any weight against her current infraction. Clearly, her boyfriend wasn't supposed to be having other girls in his barn. She guessed that the barn held some sort of historical significance to the couple. She thought maybe that there were some serious trust issues hanging in the air between them.

"Why are you researching the meteor showers?" Lana asked, interrogation style.

"I'm not, so much as Giles is," Buffy replied. "He's, well, kind of my surrogate father. He was the librarian at my high school and we've remained very close."

"Why is he interested in Smallville, then?"

"Two meteor showers hitting the same town within fifteen years of one another seems a little suspicious," Buffy answered. She was really glad that she and Willow had done some research before embarking on this mission. The Kawachee caves, the meteor showers, the strange properties that the stones seemed to have—all of this information and more had been readily available in Luthorcorp's secure database. Willow had spent the better part of a day hacking into those files, and Buffy had been sure to look over the stolen information.

"What was he really going to show you?" she asked. The suspicion in her voice was pungent, and Buffy knew that she should choose her words carefully. The last thing she wanted was to say too much and lose the trust that she had built with Clark.

"The caves, just like he said." When Lana didn't reply, she continued, "Do you not trust him?"

Lana pulled into the drive at her old house, and turned to Buffy, looking angry.

"Clark lies," she said shortly. "Clark has secrets. Clark doesn't trust anyone." Buffy could see something in her eyes, something desperate; something hungry. "How did you make him trust you? He said it, just like that, and I heard it. He said that he trusts you, and he barely even knows you. I've been his friend for five years and he still doesn't trust me."

Buffy hesitated. "I trusted him," she said simply.

"What do you mean?" Lana asked.

"I opened up to him first; told him about myself without asking anything in return."

Lana sat back on her seat, looking up at the roof of the car. "He told me, no more secrets, no more lies, and for a while it was perfect."

"What changed?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but I swear it's true," Lana said. "He died."

Buffy stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"He was shot, and in the hospital he flat-lined and the doctors declared him dead. I saw it all happen, and he was really, really dead. It was like the end of the world, but then his body was gone from the hospital, and the next thing I knew, I was dropping by the Kent farm to see his parents and he was standing there, his clothes torn to shreds, dirt, or something, all over his face, and he was alive. He had no explanation or anything, and after that he was guarded and secretive and lying to me all the time, just like it had been before."

Buffy stared at this girl, and tried to see what Clark saw in her. She was frantic and suspicious and confused; and suddenly Buffy understood a lot more than she had before.

"Dying changes a person," she said quietly.

"How do you know?" Lana asked. Buffy looked down at her hands, wondering how much she should be telling this girl. She knew a lot already, probably more than she realized, having seen the vampire and Buffy's Slayer abilities, but she probably suspected nothing about the extent of the demonic world. Portals to demon dimensions, sisters made from pure energy, witches bringing people back to life; it all seemed so far away from the world that Lana was in.

"I died."

Lana turned toward her, eyes wide in amazement. "What was it like?"

"It seemed like a long time…something close to forever. Obviously, it wasn't that long in real life, but it seemed like forever."

Buffy paused and Lana was ready to jump in, but before she could, Buffy continued, her gaze locked on the dash in front of her. "I was happy. Wherever I was, I was happy, at peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was alright. Time didn't mean anything. I was warm, and I was loved, and I was complete. I don't understand theology or any of that, but I think I was in Heaven.

"When I came back, everything was hard and bright and violent: everything I felt, everything I touched. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost; this is Hell."

Lana's eyes, wide with wonder, were fixed on Buffy. She seemed so much more sincere than anyone she knew, and she could tell, without doubt, that she was telling the truth.

"Do you think… do you think that Clark is going through what you went through?"

Buffy raised her eyes from the dash, and she met Lana's eyes. "I withdrew from the people that mattered to me. I became distant; in some ways I blamed them for bringing me back. I knew that they loved me and that life could be good if I let it, but I didn't want it to be. I was intoxicated by the misery that life could offer and I couldn't shy away from it. No matter how often a way to make life better appeared, I couldn't take it. It was like after what I had experienced, no feeling on Earth could compare."

She laughed bitterly. "I'm only telling you this, because I hope that you can help Clark. I usually don't get this personal with strangers."

"How can I help him?"

Buffy thought about how her friends had stayed by her for so long, how they had stood by her, even when she pushed them all away. It had been so hard for them to learn where she had really been, that they had not saved her from an untold Hell dimension.

"Just be there for him," she said. "It's going to take time."

* * *

Lana's mind was swimming as she relived the past few weeks. Clark had been so distant, though at the time she had been mostly angry at him for pushing him away, now she could start to empathize, at least a little bit.

Her hands were shaking. She pushed them against her cheeks and leaned forward, resting her head on the steering wheel. She had silently refused Buffy's offer to show her around her old house, and instead had asked her one last question.

"Are you happy now?"

Buffy had smiled and touched Lana's shoulder. "It's better. It's never perfect, but it's better."

Closing her eyes, Lana tried to imagine Heaven. Buffy was special, Lana could tell. She possessed strength that she had never seen any other human show, and somehow, she could tell that her strength penetrated deeper than the physical strength she had displayed. When she had spoken about the pain she had gone through, it had sounded so honest; Lana couldn't envision ever being able to be that truthful about her feelings, despite what she had preached about to Clark.

She remembered when Chloe had gained the power to make people unable to lie around her. She thought of how her stomach had turned to lead when she realized that the truth was inevitable. No matter how unimportant the question was, Lana liked that escape being there.

When she opened her eyes again, the world came rushing back to her in stunning clarity. The smell of her car, the cricket song and rustling leaves, the forest and cemetery not far away; Lana heard Buffy's words echo in the empty car: "This is Hell."

* * *

The pain in the place where Xander's eye had once been was persistent. It wasn't sharp, or particularly strong, but it was always there, ever since the operation. Xander was all for board-approved surgeries and the eradication of back-alley abortions, but in this case, a highly experimental, and very illegal procedure was the only option that he faced.

Since he had lost his eye, Buffy had looked at him differently. He knew, without doubt, that she blamed herself completely for what happened to him, and despite his assurances that he did not blame her in the least, he knew that action spoke worlds louder than words.

Soon after the incident at the wine vineyard there had been a major upheaval in the Summers' household. The dozens of potential Slayers that had congregated there, the rebellious Slayer Faith, Buffy's best long-time friends and even her own sister had stood up against her and asked her to leave. Thinking back on that day, Xander felt more than sick. When he considered what she had given up for them, for the world, he started to shake.

It had made so much sense at the time. The world was ending, and Buffy had made a wrong call. She was acting irrational and detached—she was responding with pure instinct, with no regards to the feelings or alliances of those involved.

But she had been right. As the rest of them had gathered in the basement, trying to figure out what their next move should be, Xander could tell just by watching that no one had a clue. They were amateurs, even Faith, who had never had the inclination to lead, had never considered herself anything other than a body—for fighting, for fucking; she had always been sensation seeking and illogical.

And Buffy had returned to them. She had brought them the weapons they had needed: the scythe, which she still kept close to her, and the amulet. She had come back and she had said the words, had declared her forgiveness. Through her friendly banter and playful manner Xander could tell—she saw her battle scars on each of them.

So Xander was going to try to fix himself. When they had signed on the Lex Luthor in order to start their Slayer School, Xander had also gained a job in construction and, more importantly, an opportunity to set things right.


	5. Chapter 5

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Five

The thick silence of the Luthor mansion was sliced through with an echoing crash from the front hall. Lex stood up from his desk and began to approach the doors when they swung open. Buffy, blonde hair bouncing, strode forward.

"You're breaking up with me," she said, slowing to a stop and resting her weight on one foot. She pouted and then continued, "Let me guess. It isn't me, it's you." She nodded and blinked innocently.

Lex took a second to absorb her deafening presence before he began to speak, choosing his words carefully and diplomatically. "Despite the amazing capabilities that you and your girls possess, the research into the nature of your abilities has yielded, and shows no promise to yield, any useful, or even remarkable data. For all scientific and intensive purposes, you are completely human."

"I thought you might say something like that," Buffy mused. "Actually, Willow and I had it almost pegged, word for word. So I brought you a present that will change your mind."

She turned and left the room, returning a moment later dragging a man, bound and gagged, by the feet. She presented him at Lex's feet.

"I hope you don't expect me to give you funding over the kidnapping of a rather… homeless looking man," Lex said, annoyed.

"Of course not," Buffy said. She pulled a foot-long wooden stick, sharpened to a point at one end, out of her purse. She spun it in her hand before plunging it into the man's chest. Lex jumped backward, alarmed at the sudden violence, and wondered if, once again, he would have to cover a brutal murder performed by a charming and beautiful young woman.

Instead of watching a scruffy, tied up man scream and die; instead of a bloody river staining the expensive hardwood of his office, there was an animalistic snarl and the man burst into dust.

"You have cleaning staff," Buffy said, elegantly standing and putting the stake back into her purse. "They'll clean the dust. Or…" Buffy paused and smiled. "You could study it."

Lex stared at the place where the man had been, where now a thin layer of dust coated the floor. He ran his hand over his head, and then looked up at Buffy. He had always been slightly intimidated by her; even though his adult life had hosted more than a few strong women, he had never met a woman quite like Buffy. Not only was she decisive, secretive and confident, she also had this presence about her that he had only before seen in war veterans. She had seen too much for a girl so young. She couldn't be much older than he was, and Lex considered himself a man who had been through a lot.

She was always surprising him, from the first day that they'd met, and she had demonstrated her physical strength and finesse to him. This thing that she had brought him, a creature that looked human, but exploded into dust when a wooden stake was thrust into its heart—

"Is it… a vampire?" Lex asked, feeling idiotic for even asking the question. With the obvious exception of the meteor infected vampire bat infected people, he had never even contemplated that such supernatural things could exist.

"I'll bring you another one if you continue my funding," she said.

"I want everything you have on those things," Lex said, allowing his astonishment to fade to the background. "All the information; everything you know."

Reaching into her purse again, Buffy pulled out a disk. "It's all on here. We've got legends, case studies and videos."

Together they sat down at Lex's desk, and just as the disk was inserted into the disk drive, the stained glass doors were pushed open again and Lana marched in.

"I should have known you'd pull something like this," she started, before her high heeled foot landed with a little too much momentum on the pile of dust where the vampire had been. Her feet flew forward and she flipped backward, her purse flying out of her arms and her head hitting the ground with a dull _thud_. She moaned, and looked up to see an unlikely pair peering from behind the laptop.

"Buffy?" she muttered. "What are…" Lex jumped up and rushed toward her.

"Lana," he said. "Are you alright?"

Though she was slightly dazed from the fall, she was quickly regaining her indignation. She pushed herself away from him and stood uncertainly. She headed towards where her purse had flown, and reached into it. "You can't stand to see us together, can you?" she asked.

"I know I can't," Buffy said from behind the laptop. She was flicking her finger over the touchpad of the computer, frustrated and trying to align it with the little _x_ at the corner of the screen. "There's nothing a heartbroken girl hates more than a simpering couple in starry-eyed love."

"Lana," Lex said, approaching the desk, "what are you talking about?" He pushed Buffy's chair aside and maneuvered the pointer to the close button. He shut down the program and extracted the disk, putting it off to the side.

"I don't know how, but you knew what would happen when you sent this to me." She placed the rock in front of him, next to his cell phone. Lex reached over and picked it up, holding it in the light, examining it.

Before he could say anything, Buffy interjected, "Listen, Lex, I'm going to get going. You know; things to do and all that." She stood up, and pocketed the disk. "You know what I want. I'll bring you more of what you want once I've gotten it."

Lex nodded silently, and turned back to Lana. "I swear this is the first time I've ever seen a meteor rock like this."

Buffy moved slowly as she left the room, wanting to hear as much of the conversation as she could.

"I don't have time for any more of your lies, Lex," Lana replied. "What did that do to Clark?"

Buffy stopped when she heard Clark's name. She moved around the corner, just out of sight, and continued to listen in on the conversation.

She listened to Lana describe Clark's condition, that he was paranoid and acting like everyone was turning against him, and Buffy couldn't help but think that, from her experience, Clark was always like that. As the conversation drew to a close, Buffy glanced around the corner to see Lana pacing uneasily and, in the window, a dark face, staring in at them.

* * *

The world was nothing more than a swirl of colours at this point, but somehow, though the confusion he could see a face.

It had started with her, he could remember. The box at her door, the silver meteor rock, the car running him off the road; but the terror had started with a phone call.

"I know who you are," a deep, distorted voice had growled.

He could still feel that pulsating terror, could remember how it had magnified with each betrayal. Chloe had told Lionel his secret, his father had accepted money from Lionel in exchange for Clark, and worst of all, his father's words: "You want the truth? You were never really my son. You were this thing I found in the corn field."

And now, a face, vivid through the madness; it was Lana… he knew that he could still trust Lana, if only because of her ignorance. She couldn't betray him, even standing in the same room as the one person that could never find out, because she didn't know.

They stood closer together, now, and Clark watched as Lex's hand tenderly cupped Lana's arm, slowly drawing her to him. Their faces came together in a kiss, a little hesitant, as all first kisses must be, but passionate in a way that froze Clark. Anger broiled deep in his throat and a growl came forth, primeval and animal. They had to be punished; their betrayal… it had to be stopped.

He stalked forward, rage clouding his vision, suspicion reducing his judgment to a crazed whisper in the back of his mind. He would deal with Lex first, and then, he thought, he would punish Lana.

* * *

"Buffy?" Clark stared in shattered disbelief. He could remember how, only a few days before, she had lulled him into trusting him, and here she was, in Lex's mansion.

Lana stood at the top of the stairs, not wanting to leave Buffy alone with him and terrified of what he might do to the two of them. There was no semblance of the real Clark left; this man was deranged, and, based off of Lex's scream, violent.

"I…I trusted you, Buffy," Clark said, blinking disconcertedly at her. "But, I knew I shouldn't have. You came here, and you knew everything and you told everyone. You promised that I could help you, but Lex, Lex sent you here to kill me, didn't he?"

Buffy could barely take her eyes off of him. He was a shadow of his former self, the dark bruises under his eyes could have been from weeks of sleeplessness; the sweat that coated his face, and the way he swayed drunkenly—he could have been an addict looking desperately for a fix.

"Clark, I don't want to have to hurt you," she said. Out of habit, a stake was clenched in one hand, and her other fist was tensed and raised.

He started to laugh, a bitter, disturbed laugh that scared Lana from where she stood on the stairs, just out of reach. She knew that Buffy could take him down, without trouble; after all, she had superhuman strength and speed. But there was something that Clark said that stuck out in her mind… Buffy had known about him before she had met him? What had she known, and whom had she told?

"You can't hurt me, Buffy. Not even you and the whole Slayer Brigade could put a dent in me."

"I know that whole bullet-bouncy thing is supposedly true, and all," Buffy said, "but I'm not a gun. I'm a whole lot tougher than a gun."

Lana watched, stunned, as Buffy flew at Clark. She launched at him, feet first, and spinning, hitting him once with each foot before landing, knees crouched, on the floor. Clark grunted at the impact, but didn't lose his footing. Clark started to move after this, and as Lana watched he became a clumsy blur, avoiding all of Buffy's blows but not managing to land any of his own. When he managed to stand still, Lana could see how sick he was, how he could barely stand up, but somehow, through the sickness, he still managed to move quicker than Lana thought was humanly possible.

Buffy was beginning to tire. Every punch she landed was like hitting concrete. At the speeds he was moving, even in his weakened state, she knew that if he ever landed at hit, it would be the only one that he would need. Buffy saw the blow coming, and couldn't get away fast enough. He punched her once, catching her shoulder and sending her flying across the room. She cracked her head against the pool table and fell to the ground.

* * *

Buffy woke up in a hospital bed. She rolled her eyes, and pulled the oxygen tube off of her face, before removing the tape from her IV. The last thing she needed was a hospital bill, she thought, before pausing. With Lex's money flowing into her bank accounts again, a hospital bill wouldn't be too staggering.

She unceremoniously pulled the IV needle out of her arm and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Pain shot through her shoulder, and she craned her head to look. Her neck was stiff, but her other hand crept up her arm to feel hefty bandages and a sort of cast.

She could already feel that it was healing. She decided to leave before the doctors noticed the accelerated rate at which her bones knit themselves back together. With some difficulty, she managed to change back into her clothes.

As she exited the room, a doctor, reading from a clipboard and rushing into the room crash into her. She winced and placed her hand on her tender shoulder, before looking up with a cringe at the doctor who had crashed into her.

To her surprise, he was really cute. He seemed a little bit bumbling and nervous, and horrified now that he had seen who he had crashing into.

"Oh, wow, I'm really sorry," he said quickly. "You should be in bed; that arm is pretty wrecked."

She shrugged. "It will be fine. I'm just going to get going now; is there any paperwork I need to look at?"

She braced herself for the unavoidable battle: the doctors always want to keep patients for observation, and, under normal circumstances, with a normal girl that would be fine. But Buffy wasn't about to spend the rest of the night in a hospital, even if she needed to walk home.

* * *

Clark rounded the corner into Lana's hospital room. He could remember, in terrifying clarity, holding her against the wall, his hand wrapped around her neck; her sputtering coughs as she gasped for air. He saw, in his mind, Milton Fine as he brought that contraption close and it came crashing down, and the pain as the silver kryptonite had ripped through his body and into the machine.

Chloe was there, sitting next to Lana's bed, and she awkwardly made an excuse to leave. Clark looked at Lana, and he felt sick when he thought of the pain that he had caused her. He couldn't imagine how he would begin to apologize.

"Lana, I—" he started, but she interrupted him.

"Clark, it's okay," she said. "Chloe told me everything."

Clark felt his insides turn to lead as he contemplated the meaning of the word _everything_. Everything was too scary a concept to even thing of. As she continued talking though, she smoothly recited the half-truth that Chloe had told her, and Clark relaxed.

"There is one thing, though," she said, after assuring him that the kiss between her and Lex had, indeed, been a hallucination.

Clark looked up from the place on the bed where their hands touched and, slightly concerned, said, "What is it?"

"It's about that girl, Buffy," Lana said. "There's a lot of mystery surrounding her. Did you know that she was in the room, with Lex, before I even got there?"

Clark shook his head. He thought of his paranoid accusations, and wondered if there was any sort of truth in them. The fact that he had trusted her so readily made him feel sick, and he made a mental note to confront her about it.

"And there was something else," Lana admitted. "When she fought you, I mean, Chloe said that it was the meteor rock that infected you and gave you all those powers, but, Buffy, she seemed to already know what she was up against."

Looking back down at their hands, Clark couldn't help but wince a little. He hated, more than anything, having to lie to Lana. More often than not, he would waver just enough in his response to make her suspicious, and she always claimed to know when he was being less than honest.

"Buffy and her friends are studying the meteors," Clark responded. "She probably recognized the symptoms."

Nodding slowly, Lana admitted, "She did tell me that she was studying the meteor rocks."

It was then that Buffy's head rounded the corner. "I could hear your somber conversation a mile away. We can be happy now. We stopped the bad guy," she said, gesturing to Clark. "Well," she continued, "stop in the same way that a fly hitting a windshield stops a Mach truck. What exactly happened?"

Considering that Buffy knew about his powers, but, contrary to Lana's beliefs, actually knew nothing about the meteor rock that had caused his rash behaviour, he decided to pull her out of the room.

"You're working with Lex," he said, once they were out of the room. Chloe was still standing there, obviously waiting for the Lana-Clark heart-to-heart to be over. She hadn't even noticed the patched-up blonde slip into the room behind her, and now she stared in confusion as Clark glared and the girl stared back with wide-doe eyes.

"Yea," she admitted, and Chloe flinched, remembering the reaction that Clark had had, only hours before, when he had seen emails from a Luthor on her computer. He had indicted her of betraying his secret, and though he had been under the influence of the mysterious silver kryptonite, his accusatory words had still been painful.

"But it's got nothing to do with you," she continued. "Lex funds a project that I'm working on."

Clark didn't look convinced. "What kind of project? You didn't tell him anything about me, did you?"

She shook her head, and Chloe realized what this meant. This girl, she knew something about Clark. This pretty blonde whom Chloe had never met or heard mentioned before, she knew. Chloe had been friends with Clark for years before she had ever even suspected anything about Clark was different. Jealousy wrapped itself around her stomach and squeezed.

"I fondly call it the 'saving the world' project," she quipped, "but to Lex, it's more like the 'training and sheltering the potentially dangerous and hormonal female freaks'."

Clark opened his mouth to speak, but the girl interrupted again. "And no," she said, "I haven't told anyone else your secret. I asked you to trust me, I mean, are you sure whatever drug you were on wore off?"

"It wasn't a drug," Clark said. "What does Lex get out of all this? You should know that he's not exactly an honest man; he's the last person you should trust."

"And I don't trust him," she replied. She reached around the back of her head to scratch the skin just behind her cast. Chloe noticed that she had put her shirt on backward. "My trust is not often misplaced. Is this interrogation done? I'd like to go home and rest this arm that you so graciously wrecked."

Chloe saw a cloud of guilt enter Clark's eyes as, for the first time during the conversation he glanced from her face to her encased shoulder.

"First time's free, Buddy," she said, poking his chest. "Next time, though, I come after your family."

She laughed at the horrified expression on Clark's face and then turned away. She planned to walk home from here, patrol a little maybe; take out her frustration at finding an opponent stronger and faster than her on some dumb vampires. She turned her head back and called, "Willow's expecting a date with that girl we talked about, the one with the files."

Before Clark could reply, she had skittered around the corner and out of sight.

Finally, Clark turned to Chloe. "Chloe, random girl, random girl, Chloe," she said, pretending to introduce herself. "It was so courteous of you to make my presence known."

"Her name's Buffy," he said. "And you're the girl with the files. I'll explain it all later, I need to go say goodbye to Lana."

Girl with the files, eh? She mused as he walked away. Not, my friend the stellar reporter, or the beautiful and intelligent girl with the files, or even just Chloe? She puffed her cheeks out in frustration and tried not to listen to the awkward goodbyes in the nearby room.

* * *

Her white dress shimmered, but every other part of her melted into the darkness around her. With her wide black eyes and long dark hair, she could have been invisible in the night.

She stood still, though every fiber in her body wanted to tear loose and run toward the sparkling green oasis in front of her. She could feel their power; she could hear them sing. Every eye glittered at her, nuclear and threatening, and more than anything else, they felt like home.

So she wandered forward, letting her dress flow around her, and pausing to let it settle again after each step. She could feel Parker, just behind her, her new baby; he would be perfect to tempt the Slayer. She knew that he had done it once, lulled her to bed with his pretty words and long lashes, and counted on him being able to entice her again.

She could feel the Slayer's heart pulsating in the distance. She could almost taste her blood on her lips. And farther away, a million times stronger, was a power. She saw it enveloping her, this strange darkness that was far, far more evil than anything she had ever encountered. She knew though, knew that it was different. The green stones did not protect him, the way that they protected her. She knew that the kind he craved her of a different colour.

The colour of the blood she desired; the deep iridescent red that would coax him to her side. She could dispose of Parker, the whining, sappy baby, with the Slayer and let him feast. Now, she thought, she would rather go to him.


	6. Chapter 6

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Six

With Spike back in the picture, Buffy couldn't help but notice an uneasy familiarity in the circumstances at home. The girls were different, but it was the same crowded situation; she opened the door to see sleeping bags and pizza boxes, and she had no doubt that Spike had set up camp in the basement.

She headed downstairs, trying to remind herself that the situation was different. In Sunnydale she had been the caretaker of scared girls, and now she was the guide of a group of strong, confident women. The big bad was not nearly as big nor as bad; in fact, asides from Spike's cryptic speculation, the big bad lacked definition.

Much the way she now dreaded earthquakes, the vampire in the basement, hiding away from the dozen girls above, added a new layer of trepidation to her cake.

"Spike," she said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. He had set up a sleeping bag on the floor, next to a wall, and was propped against it with his long legs stretched over the floor. "Did you patrol tonight?"

"Just got in, love," he said. "Run into a spot of trouble?"

She gestured to her shoulder. "Yea, a little bit. No big deal though, it should be fine by tomorrow." She folded herself up next to him, her legs tucked under her, and her good arm propping her up. "Will you tell me about L.A.?" she asked.

"You want to know how me and Angel got into such a mess," he stated. "I suppose your curiosity got the better of you; finally drove you to speak to me."

Buffy sighed. "We kind of left off in a weird spot."

"I remember," Spike said quietly. "You told me you loved me."

She looked up from her hands and met his eyes. "I wasn't lying." Her eyes were wide, darting from focus on his left eye to his right, and then back, nervously unable to settle on one focal point. Spike tilted his head to the side, and he suddenly had so many questions, about the past, about her feelings, about the future.

He reached out and cupped her face in his hand. She looked tired, he thought, and wondered what kind of dark creature could have drained her so. His eyes came to rest on her lips, and tentatively, he moved closer.

"I wasn't lying, Spike," she said softly, "but I don't think that I can go back to that place."

Their relationship had began after she had been brought back from the dead; she had been alone and desperate to add some sort of flavour back into her hopeless daily life. She had turned to him as a last resort, and used him relentlessly. He remembered how, when he had been soulless, he hadn't cared; it had only mattered that she would touch him now, and he had ignored the disgust he knew she felt, not only with him, but with herself. When he had regained his soul all these feelings had come crashing into him and he had found himself wanting something more—her love in return.

But he knew what he still represented to her: the darkest, bleakest time in her life. Looking back, he was amazed that they had been able to salvage a friendship, and that, when she had been ready to give up, she had found solace in him.

"I understand, Buffy," he said, "I do. But I need you to know," he leaned in closer and left a soft, lingering kiss on her lips; a kiss that wasn't returned, but was tender and non intrusive in a way that their kisses had never been. "I need you to know that I will never stop loving you."

When he drew away he could see that her eyes were teary, and she leaned in close and let him wrap his arms around her, and, for the first time since the last time he had held her in his arms, he felt safe. He felt human.

* * *

Willow woke up when she heard Buffy get in. It wasn't unusual for Buffy not to get home until after the sun had risen; lately she had been running on less than two hours of sleep a night, usually squeezed in from just after dawn until breakfast. She rose, and, still in her pajamas, turned on her laptop and started to work.

She had gotten a job where she could work from home; she encrypted files for a fairly large software company, as well as testing their security. The skills she had picked up from attempting break-and-enter into the company's mainframe on a daily basis were well served for hacking into police and government files.

She had just finished fixing herself a pot of coffee when the doorbell rang. Moving slowly while she rubbed her eyes, she somehow made it across the living room without impaling herself on anything. When she pulled found the door she was finally able to stop rubbing her eyes and pulled open the door before she opened her eyes. The black swirling fireworks that accompany a good eye-rub reduced her vision to tunnels, and in the middle of it all was a face.

Chloe hadn't been able to sleep. Clark had told her about the vampires—the _real_ vampires, she reminded herself—and their reaction to the Kryptonite. She had gathered all of her files; everything from her digitalized Wall of Weird, as well as her new information on _Shanshu_, the mysterious word that Clark had told her, and headed over to Lana's old house as early as she thought the rest of the normal, sleeping class of the population could handle.

She was surprised to see several girls in the yard, one of them set up in front of a punching bag, a few of them grappling under a large oak tree, and one balancing on the top of the fence that surrounded the yard. When the door opened, however, a tousle-haired, pajama-clad person was on the other side, looking tired and slightly dazed.

"Sorry," Chloe said. "Did I wake you up?"

"No, no, don't worry," the redhead said quickly. "I'm just all sleepy-eyed still. It's like attack of the sleepless in here, and that, coupled with the complete lack of beds, seems to have installed a permanent tired yucky feeling."

Laughing nervously, Chloe held out her hand. "Chloe Sullivan," she said. It took the girl a second to respond, she seemed a little bit disoriented still, but she managed to clasp Chloe's hand.

"Willow," she said, before yawning. "Rosenburg." She was weary of verbally inviting people in, a habit developed from many years of living on the Hell Mouth, but her eyes were adjusting nicely and she could see that the sun was out in full brilliance. Plus, she mused; she didn't think that a vampire would be able to get past the four Slayers in the front yard.

"Would you like to come in?"

"Sure, yea," Chloe said. "Clark sent me. He said that you need info on the meteor rocks."

"Indeed we do," Willow said, winding her way through the living room and back to her computer.

Willow was pleased when she saw that Chloe had brought her own laptop; there was nothing that she hated more than other people touching her computer.

"So, the meteor shower happened about sixteen years ago," Chloe started as she set up her computer. "I mean, the first one did." She looked up at Willow and said, cautiously, "How much did Clark tell you?"

"Nothing," Willow said, grumpily. She was still miffed at her lack of success with Clark's questioning. She minimized the window that had her analysis of his scar on it, and wondered how much about Clark Chloe knew.

"Well," Chloe continued, "since then, Smallville has become the home to a whole bunch of freaks." She gestured at the computer screen, and Willow leaned closer to see. "I have the weirdness that I've encountered documented here, and as long as you promise it's not going to become your hit list, you can have copies."

"What kind of weirdness, exactly?" Willow asked, thinking back on all the strange things that had happened to her, Buffy and Xander during high school. From disappearing girls to exploding heads, there was always something supernatural lurking.

"The meteor rocks seem to give people abilities. A kid attacked by bugs would suddenly gain their characteristics or be able to control them. One guy could split himself into two; there was this girl that could take over other people's bodies, and another girl who could become any person she wanted. There were always cases of mistaken identity, that's for sure."

Leaning in close like she was, Willow couldn't help but notice how good this girl smelled, and wondered how bad her morning breath was; hoped she hadn't gotten herself sweaty during the night.

A stifled yawn, followed by a squeak caused the two of them to look up from the computer screen. With tousled hair and swollen eyes, Dawn lumbered down the steps. "Where's Buffy?" she asked.

"Getting her hour of sleep curled up on the cement basement floor," Willow replied. "She said we're getting paid though, and we're stocking up on bunk beds in a major way."

"I got a bed last night," Dawn bragged. "We had this intense rock-paper-scissors tournament for it, and I must be psychic or something, because I beat every one of those Slayer-ettes to the ground." She emphasized her point by stomping her foot.

"A rock-paper-scissors tournament? How come I wasn't told about this rock-paper-scissors tournament?"

"Because Xander told us before our last tournament that you are the current unbeaten champion of rock-paper-scissors. There was no way that I was risking a night in a bed to that."

Chloe raised her eyebrows in amusement. When Clark had told her about the kind of operation they ran, she had assumed she would find a house full of mature, down to earth individuals all focused and hell bent on saving the world at any given point in time. These two girls though, they seemed so normal; so young.

"Where is Xander, anyway?" Willow asked. "He must be busy at work, because I haven't seen him in a few days."

"Yea," Dawn said. "Being one of the only males in the house, you think someone would have noticed a bit sooner."

A look of fleeting worry crossed Willow's face, before she shrugged. "Xander's a big boy," she said. "I'm sure he's fine."

* * *

Xander woke up to the familiar feeling of claustrophobia that he had become almost accustomed to since the surgeries had started. His post-op room was white, but barely larger than the bed, and one whole wall was black; tinted observation windows, he suspected.

He was too excited to sit still, so he pushed the button to raise his bed and reached over to the small bedside table to grab his bag. He had stocked up on time killers—his Game Boy, a comic book or two—and poured it out on his bed. Though his body still felt heavy, and his fingers felt more like boneless sausages than anything else, he managed to switch the button on his Game Boy to _on_.

The aftereffects of the anesthesia were always the worst for him. The pain in his eye, he could deal with, but the nausea, the lack of coordination and the sensation that he was swollen all over was less understandable and much more frightening than normal pain.

With a shaking hand, he placed his Game Boy back on the bed and touched his face. His left cheek felt tender, and slowly his fingers crept upward, to the bandages. It all felt so swollen underneath, but a smile formed on his face when he realized: there was a familiar lump where he had gotten used to having a hollow wound.

He grinned, and then let out a laugh. He was far from home free—he had no idea if the surgery had been successful, if he would regain his vision, but this was a step. Knowing that his eye, his new eye, was there, it was reward enough.

* * *

Clark stiffened when he saw Lana walk up the stairs of the loft. It wasn't her presence that affected him, but rather the look on her face. It was a determined face, a battle face, a face that would prove to be quite confrontational, he expected.

There was nothing Clark hated more than a confrontation: it meant more lies, it meant secrets, awkwardness. There was nothing good that could come out of a confrontation.

"Clark, hi," she said, weighing her words carefully. "We need to talk."

_I can tell_, he thought, and wondered vaguely if he was nearly as transparent as she was. He concentrated on making his face blank; despite how bullets ricocheted off of him as if he were made of steel, there was nothing Clark could do to make his expressions impenetrable.

"When you were talking to Buffy, outside my hospital room," she started, and Clark dreaded what she might be about to say, and suddenly his mind raced back to that moment, trying to remember what incriminating phrases might have been exchanged. "You were talking to her about Lex."

Clark knew he should respond, somehow, nod or something, but he wanted to keep his expression as blank as possible, and he thought that any movement might jeopardize his willpower.

"She was talking about how Lex is giving her money," Lana continued, "money, so that she can save the world."

The next bits of the conversation rushed through Clark's head, and he knew that, though she had lowered her voice, Buffy had next reference his 'secret'. Fear pulsated through his veins and he wondered if she had also heard the part where Buffy had absolutely no idea what had caused him to act that way, and thus could not have known about the alleged super-strength 'side-effects'.

"Look at me, Clark," Lana said. She reached out and touched his face, and Clark was confused when he saw concern predominating over the anger she had previously displayed. "I don't want to lose you again."

"Lana," Clark said, speaking for the first time, "what are you talking about?"

"You're a good person, Clark," she said. "You think it's your responsibility to save everyone, but it isn't. The last time you tried to save Smallville you got yourself shot." She pressed her lips together, and Clark could see that she was remembering that day. Clark remembered, though vaguely, how she had sat next to his bed and, through his delirium, her words had washed over him and he'd felt safe. He thought about how he had seen her, through a haze, for one last time before he woke up in the Fortress.

"You died, and I watched it happen," she said. "I couldn't go through that again. You need to accept it, Clark, accept that you're just a person like everyone else. Buffy doesn't need your help."

Clark looked at Lana, and smiled for her. "Lana, I would never let anything happen to me," he said, and the phrase sounded slightly backward to him, like he should have been assuring her that _she_ would be safe. It sounded absurd to him to even contemplate that him getting hurt was the issue here.

"I would never let anything come between us," he said. He took her hand and led her over to the couch; he sat down and she curled up next to him. "I love you, Lana."

She looked up at him, her dark eyes penetrating. "I know." There was a long silence, and Lana wiggled closer, wrapping his arm around her and snuggling into his armpit. "But you don't trust me," she said softly.

Clark stayed silent; he knew he hadn't been meant to hear the last part. She had mumbled it almost imperceptibly into his chest, and a normal guy, san super hearing, would have never been able to pick it up.

Lana closed her eyes and nuzzled her face against the flannel of Clark's shirt. She thought about what Buffy had told her; that in order to gain Clark's trust she would have to trust him first, show to him that she had no secrets from him. She let embarrassing stories flood through her mind, thinking of when she was little and had done dumb things; how when she giggled too hard she would pee a little, and how she had once drunk too much wine and kissed a girl, but they all seemed so insignificant.

She had a big secret now, Lex had given her that. She had run her hands over an alien spaceship and was trying to get it open. But she knew how he would respond to this news. He would shy away from her, try to change the subject, insist that an alien invasion was the least of their worries. He would try to deny that it had happened or ask her to forget about it.

And there was something, she had to admit, about finally having a secret for herself. There was something intoxicating about having to choose words carefully and dodge around the truth. She wondered if Clark ever felt like this; like having some taboo secret was an adventure.

"_I haven't told anyone else your secret_," Buffy had said to him, outside the hospital room. _"I asked you to trust me_." Anything else she might have said, any more reference to a secret, had been drowned out by hospital chatter, and a nurse calling for a code blue. Though she had long suspected it, she knew a secret was there, and she wanted, more than anything to be let in on it.

* * *

Since it was a weekend, Buffy allowed herself, for the first time in months, to get a full eight hours sleep. By the time she woke up it was almost dinner time, and, because of the wintry season, it was already starting to get dark.

Stephanie, a pretty Italian Slayer with cooking experience, had a pot on each burner filled with pasta. She was dicing and chopping in a very impressive way, and was singing a vigourous Italian song. Buffy poked her head into the kitchen and called, "What we're not ordering in tonight?"

"I thought that some home cooking might make for a pleasant change," she replied. "Though no one tends to be home at once, and though it's almost blasphemous for me to say it, pasta reheats well in the microwave."

Buffy used a fork to retrieve some noodles from the pot, and chewed thoughtfully on the mostly-raw pasta. "My sleeping patterns have got to change," she said. "Pasta for breakfast is just wrong."

She headed upstairs to see if the shower was free, musing about the near impossibility of housing thirteen girls in a home with only one shower. There was a bathroom on the main floor, but it was hardly even adequate for the extensive time that the girls dedicated to doing their makeup.

Returning from her shower, more than slightly irked (someone had obviously just used her toothbrush; these things don't get wet by themselves), she was pacified when she realized that the pasta was done, and was accompanied on the stove by several slices of garlic bread. She had just sat down to feast by herself at the large dining room table when the door bell rang.

A few of the Slayers wandered down the stairs, curious as to who would be dropping by. Buffy watched them descend and figured that she could return her concentration to her food, and the girls could handle their unexpected visitor.

"Hey, Buffy," one of the girls called out. "There's a boy at the door asking for you." Neither of the two girls invited him in; there was something about this boy, though he was charming and cute, he seemed to have a strange presence about him.

Buffy stood up, and wondered if perhaps Clark had come to see her. The girls would have recognized him though, and surely would have invited him in.

The boy standing at the door, nervously shuffling his feet, and looking up at her through long, dark eyelashes, was Parker.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. They had not left their relationship on good terms, and her negative feelings toward him resonated clearly in her voice. "Just thought you'd drop by?" she asked, sarcastically.

"I know, Buffy, that I hurt you," he said. Buffy watched him speak, noting his pale skin and the dark bruises under his eyes. She approached him, barely paying attention to the words he spoke; she knew they would be just the right ones to make her forgive him, to invite him in, to let him get close again, but she looked through all of it.

"Who sent you?" she asked quietly.

Parker smiled in a confused way, mixing just the right amount of surprised indignation with confusion and amusement. "Sent me? No, I transferred to Central Kansas—"

"Come in," she said, distractedly ushering him forward. His smile widened and he continued to apologize, and Buffy could feel the pasta in her stomach protesting to the lies he was spewing.

"You were a jerk, Parker," she whispered. "You were a jerk, but you didn't deserve this."

He frowned. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Girls?" Buffy said. They looked up at her, suddenly alert, and she knew that they could feel it too. Buffy looked at him, so animated, so lifelike, and felt the familiar rush of sadness that she always felt when she faced death.

The two Slayers, tensely awaiting orders, seemed to be making Parker nervous, and for good reason.

"Dust him," Buffy said.

* * *

Buffy left before they attacked; she didn't want to watch a person she had known, a person she had been intimate with, turn into dust on their living room floor. The night sky was dark again, and Buffy realized that she hadn't seen the sun today. It seemed like a depressing notion, like she was finally letting the darkness catch up to her.

She couldn't fathom what would have possessed Parker to venture into the clubhouse of eleven stake-happy Slayers. It didn't make any sort sense; even if he had been carrying a meteor rock, it wouldn't be long before the girls found it and destroyed it. They had been training in a different sort of fighting—where one seeks to cripple instead of going straight for the kill.

"Did you like my present?"

Buffy spun and squinted to see, through the darkness, a pale figure wearing a long white dress.

"I sent him to you, gift wrapped in death, just like the doctor ordered," she said.

"Drusilla," Buffy declared.

She was just about to attack, when she heard a groan and the sudden _thud _of a large body hitting the hard ground. Again she turned, and Clark was behind her, fetal and moaning on the ground. She rolled her eyes, frustrated at the intrusion, and a little bit thankful for the warning: Drusilla had well equipped herself.

Drusilla was backing away now, and Buffy, still determined to take her down, started to run towards her, before she realized what the dark-haired vampire was holding.

She held the gun level with Buffy's head without hesitation.

"I love the old," she explained, her free hand reaching up to the stars, "but I'm quite fond of the new. My little Parker bought it for me, and it feels so strong, like trampling feet and burning flame."

Buffy remembered the pain of a bullet piercing her flesh; the devastation it had brought to them when it had torn Tara from their lives.

Clark could feel the effects of the Kryptonite beginning to wane as the vampire backed away, and he watched the bloom of fire surround the mouth of the gun as it was fired. Time slowed and he launched himself in front of Buffy, but time began to catch up with him as his proximity to the pale women increased.

The bullet plunged into his chest and he gasped, shocked at the sudden pain. He fell to the ground in front of Buffy and the Kryptonite and bullet created this alarming force pulling him near unconsciousness.

Buffy fell to her knees beside Clark, fumbling to rip his shirt to reveal the wound, but keeping her eyes fixed on Drusilla. She pulled Clark's head onto her lap and watched as she backed away slowly, and finally the darkness folded around her and she was gone.

She felt Clark's body relax as soon as Drusilla had left, and watched, in amazement as the bullet resurfaced and rolled off of his chest. Within a second the wound had healed up and Clark opened his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Clark asked. Buffy smiled.

"I don't think you're in any condition to be asking me that," Buffy replied.

"I'm fine." Clark pushed himself up off the ground and ran his hand nervously through his hair. "So, um…" he started.

"Right, er," Buffy said.

There was a moment of silence before Clark said, "I just wanted to see how your shoulder was."

Buffy held her arm out, and rotated it a bit. "Good as new."

Clark nodded. They looked at each other for a bit longer, neither certain of what to say.

"I guess I'll see you at school on Monday," Clark said, and turned to leave.

As she watched him leave, it struck her how amazing this man really was. He had taken a bullet for her, she someone who had burst into his life swinging; had threatened his security and whom he barely knew.

"Clark?" she called out. He turned around, his green eyes flashing in the darkness. Buffy looked at him, searching for… something. "Thanks," she finally said.

He smiled widely, and Buffy was struck by how revealing his smile was… how honest.

"Thank you," she repeated. He raised a hand in acknowledgement, and then turned away.


	7. Chapter 7

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Seven

Something had been bothering Buffy all day; she saved people's lives on a daily basis, and it never bothered her that people didn't give anything in return. This was her calling, her destiny, and though often she wished she had been given a chance at a normal life, she had accepted that this was the path that she was bound to follow.

Clark had saved her life.

She wandered tentatively into the Kent barn, hoping that maybe, there would be some way that she could sort into words exactly what she was feeling. It wasn't that she'd never been helped before: during the fight with Caleb, Angel had jumped in at exactly the right moment, and though she could never be sure what would have happened had he not been there, there was a chance that she could have been a goner.

But throwing yourself in front of a bullet is different than throwing a punch at the right moment. What Clark had done, it was self-sacrificing. If Drusilla had advanced, instead of backing away, Clark would probably be dead right now.

It was the kind of act of bravery that Buffy would do for any of her friends without a second thought. Clark though, he barely knew her.

She climbed the stairs to the loft and found Clark sitting at his desk, his laptop and books open in front of him.

"Oh," she said when he looked up. "You're doing the learn-y thing. I'll leave."

Clark shook his head. "I was feeling the need for a break anyway. Do you want to sit down?" He gestured to the couch.

"No," she said, restlessly trying to find a place to put her hands, on her hips, by her side, touching her hair, "I have this thing."

"A sitting down thing?" Clark asked, looking skeptical.

"No, a thing…thing."

Clark stood up, and a look of worry crossed his face. "Are you okay?"

"It's just," she started, the volume of her voice raising substantially, "I save lives, and I always get thanked and people stutter and ask me how they can repay me, and it's just such a regular facet of my life that I don't even blink anymore."

Buffy wrung her hands and continued, "And you don't even know me, and you go ahead and dive in front of me, and you could have died. Right? I mean, if Drusilla had come any closer with that rock, then you could have died?"

He didn't answer, but Buffy took his silence as affirmation.

"I'm so lame, because I came over here to ask… I need to know how I can possibly repay you?" She laughed nervously.

Clark opened his mouth slowly, unsure of how to answer, but then he smiled and said, "The next time you save the world, the credit's mine."

Buffy grinned, and took a second to take in Clark's revealing smile, amazed at the way that it lit up his face.

"Are you heading out, now?" Clark asked. "You're going to wander around the cemetery or whatever, and kill vampires?"

She nodded. "Patrol; I'm going to go _patrol_ the cemetery and _slay_ vampires." She gestured toward the school work covering the desk. "You're doing the school thing or I'd ask you to come."

He looked over at the work, contemplating it for a moment, before turning back to Buffy. "It's just studying. It can wait for tomorrow."

Buffy grinned, and pulled a stake out of her purse. She handed it to him and he held it in his hand, awkwardly, unsure of what to do with it. Buffy approached him and adjusted his grip slightly, before pushing his hand down to his side.

"Your arm will get stiff if you hold it like that all night," she explained. "I assume that lightning fast reflexes come with the package."

They wandered together toward the cemetery, and Buffy wondered if he'd changed his mind about what he had been planning to show her the other night, before Lana had intruded on him. She had been genuinely curious about what he could possibly have to hide, if it was something that could make him clam up so completely as soon as his girlfriend had shown up.

Probably, she thought, he had realized that if he could not even tell the person he was dating, the person he loved, how could he possibly tell this random girl?

She was about to bring it up, ask him to trust her again, when he spoke instead.

"So what's the deal with that Spike guy?" he asked.

"What do you mean, the deal?" Buffy asked. As a strictly _taken_ man she couldn't figure out why Clark would care if there were feelings between them, so if he meant something else she didn't want to answer the question in an embarrassingly personal. She seemed to be giving altogether too much of herself to these Smallville folks already.

"He has a soul, doesn't he? How did that happen?"

"I'm unclear on the details," Buffy said, deciding then to keep things at a distance, "but as far as I know, he knew of a demon that had the power to grant requests of that sort, so he traveled there and there were some trials, and when he passed them, he got his soul back."

"Do vampires often want their souls back?" Clark asked. He scanned the tomb stones, first with his normal vision, looking for fresh graves, then with his x-ray vision, looking for movement.

"No," Buffy muttered. "Never."

Clark knew the reason that Spike had gone to get his soul back—he had overheard Spike in the hospital and had, more than once since then, reflected on those words. He had gotten his soul back for Buffy.

"So, you said before that a stake kills vampires," Clark said, changing the subject when he saw the sober expression on Buffy's face. "What else does?"

"Decapitation; sunlight; enough Holy water would do it too."

"Fire?" Clark asked. Buffy nodded. "Then I need to try something," he continued. They met eyes, and Buffy grinned.

"Taking some initiative, I see," she said. "I'm proud, so proud."

Clark scanned the cemetery again, and spotted something. He pointed, but grabbed Buffy's hand when she started to move toward it. "You said you'd let me," he reminded her. They watched the vampire squirm out of the soil and then climb to his feet, looking triumphant.

Buffy turned to watch Clark, and was surprised to see that he hadn't made any move to draw closer. She tried to catch his eye, but his brow was furrowed, like he was concentrating. Suddenly, his eyes flashed orange and the air in front of his eyes warped slightly. She whipped her head around to look at the vamp, and was just in time to catch the dusty skeleton fall to the ground and disappear.

"You can zap fire from your eyes?" she asked, incredulous. "What else can you do?"

Looking sheepish, Clark admitted, "You were right about the x-ray vision."

Buffy's jaw dropped. "Bet you have fun with that one," she remarked. She looked shocked, but mostly pleased, as if he were some sort of project that was turning out to be much more profitable that she had originally expected it to be.

She grinned mischievously. "Can you fly?"

Clark shook his head, looking at the ground.

"You can, can't you?" Buffy exclaimed. She had met lots of very strong people, people with strange and random abilities (Angel had once told her about a green demon named Lorne, who could read people's futures when they sang), and with Willow around, floating objects, flying flames and telepathic communication was even relatively normal. However, she had never met such an innocent boy; someone who was so shy about his abilities. When Buffy wasn't being all secret-identity-girl, even she was known to show off a bit.

"I have really good hearing," he offered. "And sight, I have really good sight too."

"But can you fly?" Buffy insisted. He continued to ignore her.

"I have a huge lung capacity," he said, "so I can hold my breath a long time and blow things over."

"That's nothing special," Buffy said dismissively. "You can fly. Tell me you can fly."

"I can't," Clark said.

"You can," Buffy said.

Clark sighed. He pointed across the cemetery to a mausoleum. "See that?" he asked.

Buffy grinned and clapped her hands, excited like a school girl about to be shown a surprise.

He advanced on her, pulling her close to him. "Stand on my feet," he said. She put her hands on his waist, and he gripped her tightly under her elbows. "Ready?" Clark asked.

She couldn't help but let her body feel their closeness; how warm and solid he seemed to be, and she dug her hands into his back a bit harder. She nodded, excited and expectant.

Looking up at him, she could read his meaningful expression. "I can't fly," he insisted one more time. She nodded.

His knees bent and Buffy stared up at him as he stared up at the sky. Suddenly they were bursting upward, and Buffy closed her eyes and concentrated on the air rushing, almost painfully, over her skin. It was the most freeing sensation she had ever felt, and when she opened her eyes a split second later, it was to watch him, his eyes fixed ahead. She realized, then, her gaze drifting over his jaw, in the millisecond before they landed, just how striking he was.

They landed with much more force than Buffy would have expected, and with a lot more noise.

Too much noise, she thought. There was an explosion, but it hadn't come from them. Over by the Kent house the sky had lit up. There was an orange glow and the sound of a huge wind, and high in the air, there was a shadow.

She had barely registered the disturbance before she realized that she was standing on the roof of the mausoleum alone. Clark had disappeared.

* * *

The doctors had advised Xander to keep his bandages on for at least another four to six hours. As he drove home, though, he wanted, more than anything, to open _two_ eyes for the first time in years.

"_The donor eye was brown,_" the doctor had explained, _"but the chemical that promotes cell regeneration is green and has coloured the cells in the iris._"

Xander thought it would kind of cool to have two different coloured eyes. He thought it would be even cooler to not walk into door frames when his depth perception failed him.

So he had parked, just off the driveway of their house, and had turned on all the interior lights. He turned the mirror toward him and carefully unwrapped the bandages. He kept his eye closed as he touched, carefully, the tender skin around the area. It was slightly pink and irritated still, but the doctor had assured him that the discolouration would fade, with time.

What transfixed him for the moment was the perfect roundness of his closed eye. For so long now it had been concave, slanting inward where it should have been slanting out. His stomach tightened as he closed both of his eyes, and then slowly, hesitantly, he let his eyelid slide over the wet surface of his new eye.

It was bright green in an intense way, and for a second, it was perfect. The vivid word around him—the beige leather of his new car, the trees and the red Kent barn outside the car—seemed to be more beautiful seem from his new eye. Everything he had seen for the last few years, the beauty and romance of Italy, seemed suddenly insignificant compared to his countryside image.

But then, as he looked back to the mirror, and he saw his face, he felt the rest of the world collapse.

He was no longer staring at himself, his chubby cheeks, his one brown eye, but instead he saw a corpse. He stared at himself in the mirror, the two inch strip of his face that he could see morphed from man to skeleton. His skin blackened and peeled, leaving his cheek bones bleached and bare and naked to the world.

He closed his eyes so hard it hurt and screamed like someone could save him.

* * *

"And you say Clark found him like this?" Willow whispered to Buffy. They both glanced over at Xander, who was lying down with a pillow over his face.

Buffy nodded. "Clark was getting back from the hospital with his parents and he saw him in his car, at the end of the road, screaming."

"Clark said he calmed down, though, when he pulled him out of the car? Do you think it had something to do with the car?"

"No," Buffy muttered. "You didn't see him, Will, when he got in here. He freaked out all over again, refused to look at any of us, and then collapsed on the floor. Clark carried him to the bed, but he said, Willow, he said that Xander had _two_ eyes."

"Two?" Willow repeated, amazed.

"He said one of them was green."

From across the room, Xander stirred. "I think," he said, his voice quiet and scratchy, "that this means we're going to die."

Willow rushed over to him, leaning next to the bed. "_Die_, die?" she exclaimed. "_Soon_, die?"

He pulled the pillow off of his face, his hands shaking, and for the first time, Buffy and Willow looked into his new eye. It was brilliantly green, Buffy thought, almost eerily green.

"I see it again and again," he muttered. "Every time I blink you're alive again, and then less than a minute later… nothing but skeletons and rotted flesh. It's… horrible."

"Who did this to you?" Buffy demanded.

"No one _did this to me_," Xander insisted. "Lex Luthor offered the surgery to me; it was experimental—they had some sort of new chemical that promoted new cell growth with the new… organ." He let his torso fall back onto the bed and propped the pillow back onto his face.

"Are you sure that… what you're seeing… is the result of the new eye?" Buffy asked.

"I'm not crazy, Buff," Xander said. "I'm sitting here talking to you, aren't I? I just can't look at you."

"We should bring him to a doctor," Willow said. "We should—we should get Giles, shouldn't we?" Watching Xander lose his eye had been so hard for her; Xander had been her best friend since they were children, and watching his pain had been so different than watching Buffy's pain, or even experiencing her own. Xander was the spirit of the group, keeping them grounded even in the most difficult of circumstances; keeping them lighthearted when the situation was dire. When he was in pain, the whole group suffered.

Buffy nodded somberly and turned in the direction of the stairs, where Giles slept in the master bedroom. "Giles!" she called. Willow winced, figuring that Buffy had just awoken Giles, as well as Dawn and any of the Slayers that had managed to fit in their few hours sleep.

Xander listened to Giles bumble down the stairs, and waited while Buffy told him what Xander had told her. He could feel Willow's comforting hand on his arm. He could smell the macaroni that Buffy was burning. He was scared to open his eyes.

When he finally did, he found himself staring at Giles' corpse, and no matter how many time he blinked, no matter how long he squeezed his eyes shut before he opened them again, it wouldn't turn back to the man he knew.

* * *

Buffy had stayed home from school that Monday, and had stayed with Xander while Willow and Giles did her best to research what was happening to him. Xander had insisted, more than once, that he wanted to see Clark again, and refused to say why. Buffy, confused but convinced that Xander knew best what was he was going through, thought that perhaps Xander would have the best intuition as to what would help him. So, if Xander wanted Clark, Buffy would bring him Clark.

But during the next few days, Buffy had thought it was more important to contact the doctors that had performed the operation, and Xander spent quite some time meeting with them at Lex's mansion, and tests were done, DNA was extracted, and medication was prescribed. They could find nothing wrong with him—they eye appeared to be working fine biologically speaking, and when it came to his view of all things non-living, the new eye seemed to be working better than the old one.

So it was a few days later that Buffy finally gave into Xander's insistence that Clark was the only person that could help.

As she approached the house, she could hear a seriously intense conversation unfolding on the porch.

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" Clark's father demanded of him.

"I didn't want you and mom to worry," he said softly. Buffy was close enough now that she could see their faces, and they both looked pained, anxious.

There was a long silence as the two men looked at each other, and a resolved look came over the father's face. "Well, you're the only one that has a chance of stopping this, so go on, do something."

"I won't let him kill her," Clark assured him, his eyes wide, tenacity apparent in the glare of his eyes, the set of his jaw.

"Don't," the father finished, and Clark met his eye, and was just about to turn to leave when he saw Buffy coming up the porch steps.

"Buffy," he said, sounding dismissive. "I can't talk right now."

"Xander's sick," she said. "I need your help. He thinks that you know something about it."

He started to walk around her, but Buffy knew that the fact that he was still moving at normal speed meant that he was giving her a chance to keep talking. She reached out to grab his arm, and he spun toward her, evading her touch.

"Listen," he said, scathingly. "You've been really great to talk, and I understand that you've got the world to save and all, but I really have my own problems right now."

"It's your mom?" Buffy asked softly. She could see the quiet terror in his eyes—had felt the same way when her mom had been sick. "Who's trying to kill her?"

"My biological father," he said, without thinking. He could feel his father's disapproving glare from just inside the door; his father, always insisting on secrecy, had immediately challenged his relationship with Buffy, and his apparently honesty with her.

"What can I do to help?" she asked. She could tell from the desperation in his voice that this was serious. This was life threatening.

"Nothing, Buffy, I just need to deal with this alone." He turned away and started to walk again.

_Alone_, he had said. Buffy remembered feeling the same way herself, like every plight was hers and hers alone; the rest of the world could never understand the urgency, or the responsibility.

"Things fall apart," she said softly, the memory of the empty, isolated feelings she had battled with her whole life threatening to draw tears, "and evil comes and goes." She thought of the last person who had spoken these words to her, how he had tried, so hard, to be let in; to ease her isolation. "But the way people manage is that they don't do it alone. It's what makes us human."

Clark froze when he heard these words, and turned back to look at her—she seemed to understand so much of what he was going through, but at the same time she was grasping in the dark, not sure of what he could, or would allow himself to, empathize with. There was one word in that sentence that proved her ignorance, and Clark couldn't help but settle on it, and declare it the flaw in her argument. He was still, more than she could ever understand, truly alone.

"Buffy," he said, moving closer to her, "I'm not human."

"You have a soul," she offered. She paused, and Clark wondered if she was waiting for confirmation. "You do," she continued, "or else you wouldn't spend so much time trying to save people."

He was silent still, watching her lips move as she talked, unable to focus on anything but their movement and the sense of urgency pounding deep in his skull.

"You love," she said, touching his arm. "I can see it in your eyes when you're with Lana, or your father; I could see it just now when you were talking about your mom. "You care," she insisted, "so it doesn't matter what you look like, or what abilities you have, or where you came from."

He opened his mouth to speak, but Buffy cut him off. "You care, so you're no longer one of them, you're one of us, and we need each other. That's how we survive. We rely on each other."

"It doesn't matter where I'm from?" he asked quietly. "Maybe it doesn't matter what country you're from, or if you came from a working class family or a rich one, but I'm not just 'not from around here'. I'm not from anywhere near this galaxy."

Buffy was shocked more by his sudden honesty than his declaration. Without missing a beat—because she could tell that Clark was terrified that she was going to run off screaming—she said, defiantly, "Until a few years ago, my little sister was a glowing ball of universe-destroying energy. Its how you end up that matters, not where or how you started out."

Clark stared at her. She must have been privy to some pretty strange stuff in her life to take his announcement that he was an alien in stride. He even had to take a second to absorb her news, and he stuttered, "Glowing… what?"

"She was green," Buffy said. "And can I just mention that the whole alien thing is way beyond cool? The demon thing totally would have been worse. Sometimes, they look perfectly normal, but then you discover strange appendages." She looked horrified. "I mean, not that there would be anything wrong if you did have strange, er, and I mean… do you?"

Clark laughed, despite the direness of the situation. "No."

Their smiles only lasted a moment before they faded, and Buffy reached out and took Clark's hand. "Please," she said, "is there anything I can do to help your mother?" The pain of losing her own mother was rushing back to her with sudden clarity, and she didn't want Clark to have to suffer the same—he was too much of a nice guy to deserve that.

"Maybe there is," he said, softly. "Your friend Willow, she's a witch?" Buffy nodded. "Can she do spells for… pain relief?"

Buffy smiled, glad that he'd let her in. Suddenly, she was in Riley's position, trying to force her way through walls that had been built over a lifetime, and she was realizing that she might need a bigger chisel.

"I'll send her over. Don't worry, Clark, she's going to be fine."

"You lost your mother, too," he said softly.

"You're not going to lose your mother," Buffy said, with certainty. "We'll get her through this."

Clark nodded, and felt like he owed her some sort of thanks, for her vehement words of comfort; for her offer to help. Awkwardly, he pulled his hand from hers, and then disappeared.

Buffy sighed before deciding to head back home. She waved at Clark's father, who was still standing in the doorway, and then started to walk, her mixed emotions swirling in her head. She felt like her conversation with Clark was a victory of sorts—she had made contact with the Clark that he hid deep in himself, away from other people. At the same time though, she had failed Xander.

So she wandered home, and hoped that Clark would find some way to save his mother, so that at least one of them would rejoice tonight.


	8. Chapter 8

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

A/N: Thanks for everyone who reviewed... hearing feedback of any kind totally makes my day.

* * *

Chapter Eight

When Buffy returned from the Kents' stony faced and barren handed, she expected to see Xander on the couch, with a pillow or a similar light deterrent over his eyes. Instead, she was intrigued to see that he was cooking—a shocking sight in itself—and that he had adorned his eye patch once more.

"So they eye didn't work out exactly as planned," he said, pushing some taco beef around the frying pan with a spatula. "I can deal. We always deal. We're like the dealing cowboys, and we keep robbing every bank in town even after they shoot us down."

"Are we dealing something interesting at least?" Buffy inquired. "Weed? Cocaine?"

Willow was standing close behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist in a way that would have, to anyone not well versed in their history, indicated affection not explained by their current friends-only status. "The dead people were giving him the wiggins," she explained. "The dead us, I mean. So, he put the patch back on and decided that playing pirate for a while wouldn't be too bad."

"Pirate cowboys?" Buffy repeated. "Do horses like the open sea? Do cowboys like eye patches? I think all that water might be a bit of a shock for those desert dwelling cow-folks."

"It's Giles I'm really worried about," Xander continued. "Willow talked to her new friend Chloe and she said that the meteor rocks aren't just full blown weirdness, they usually do something mildly useful or extremely destructive. If we're hoping the mildly useful case might apply to ye ol' sore thumb up there," he gestured to his eye with his free hand, "then maybe there's some sort of pattern to how long you look alive. And Giles doesn't look alive."

"So to you, we're just a bunch of dead pirate cowboys? Are our horses dead too?"

"Buffy!" Willow and Xander exclaimed.

"We're talking about something seriously serious here, Buff," Xander said. "I'm seeing dead people where my friends should be, and Willow is seeing potential sex bunnies where our Slayers should be. We need to fix my broken eye and find Willow a girlfriend before either of us implodes."

"Imploding, horny, lesbian dead pirate cowboys?" After meeting Xander's exasperated eye, she held her hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, we'll get all research-y. Maybe Chloe can help us with that; I hear she's quite the computer wiz."

"Mm-hmm," Willow said, detaching herself from Xander.

"Ooh," Buffy squealed. "Maybe Chloe can solve both of our problems. What do you think, Will?"

"She shows no signs of hidden gayness," Willow reported, bleakly. "But neither did I, when I was her age. She seems to be in the first step, at least—the delay of a relationship while holding out for the just-out-of-reach perfect boy."

"For her," Xander explained, "that was me." He flashed them a goofy grin.

"And for Chloe?" Buffy asked.

"Clark Kent," Willow said. "I'm pretty sure it is, at least."

"I'd hold out for him," Buffy said, distractedly. "He's a catch. An insecure, communication challenged and identity confused catch, but a gorgeous catch all the same.

"Speaking of which," Buffy continued, "his mother is really sick. I was wondering if you'd mind heading over there and doing some pain-away mojo for her."

"Yea, no problem," Willow said, taking the frying pan from Xander and scooping some meat into a hard taco shell. "Chloe said she'd be dropping by to help research your little problem a bit later, so you'll send her to find me when she does?"

"Without doubt, Will-ster," Xander replied, filling his own taco. "I think our girl might have a bit of a crush, doesn't she?"

"At this point," Willow said as she grabbed her jacket and shoved the rest of her taco into her mouth, "I'm starting to be attracted to men again, too."

"Heaven forbid the male population might get a chance to woo Willow the Great," Xander said. "It was entirely unfair the way you were playing it before."

"Unfair, pah," Willow replied, before grabbing Buffy's hand and pulling her out of the house.

"I'm revisiting my Xander-attraction," Willow whispered to Buffy. "Do you think that's bad?"

They wandered together, the way they used to when they would patrol, and Buffy took her time to answer. "Nah," she said. "We've been through so much together; I don't think anything as healthy as attraction could be considered bad. Apocalypse, bad; Big Bad, bad; Demon gods, flying monkeys, robot girlfriends, bad; attraction, not bad."

"What about you and Spike? Attraction?"

"No," Buffy said deliberately. "No, and never again."

"Clark?"

"That boy is completely infatuated with his little girlfriend," Buffy mused. "They've got issues the size of Italy's hooligan problem, and she doesn't trust him, or confide in him, and he doesn't trust her or confide in her, but I'm fairly certain they've decided that they're set for life."

They knocked on the Kent's door, and Jonathan Kent rushed to open it. Mrs. Kent was lying on the couch, a large green rock on her forehead, and snaking red bruises making their way up her face.

Willow kneeled next to her, whispering comforting words, while Buffy stood back and explained what she was doing to the husband.

"This is a very natural kind of magic," Buffy said softly. "She's pulling energy from the earth to help with the healing. She's acting as a conduit; the magic is pure, untainted."

Jonathan watched, in amazement, as Martha's body relaxed. Her hand quivering, she reached up and removed the meteor rock from her head. "Jonathan," she muttered. "The pain, it's gone…"

He moved toward her and took her hand, and Buffy felt a twinge of regret as she watched them, their love so apparent. She had never had a chance to really appreciate her parents like that—she was too busy being a child, and then her father left as soon as she started to grow up.

She was jealous of Clark. He had a million reasons why his life might be crappier than hers at the moment, but really though, with parents like these, she might have had the strength to let herself love; she might have known enough to let people in.

There was a sudden, urgent knocking on the front door, and Buffy moved to open it. Chloe was standing there, looking frantic.

"Buffy, Willow," she said, sounding surprised. She turned to Jonathan. "Mr. Kent, I'm so sorry," she said. "I have to find Clark."

"He's not here, Chloe," Jonathan said, making a jerking movement to stand, as if he were scared to leave Martha's side.

"He's not with his professor, is he?" Chloe asked.

"Yea, they went to the cave," Jonathan replied. Buffy remembered the caves being mentioned before—the Kawachee caves that Clark had meant to bring her to.

"I've got to get to him," Chloe muttered. She glanced at Buffy and Willow before saying, "Okay, Milton Fine is not your ordinary Ph.D."

"I know all about him, he's trying to help with Martha."

"I don't know how helpful he's actually going to be," Chloe said, looking worried. She started toward the door, but Buffy called out to her.

"This professor, he's dangerous?" Buffy asked.

"Yea," Chloe said. She seemed guarded around Buffy—reluctant, it seemed, to divulge too much information about Clark.

"I should come with you."

Chloe winced, obviously lacking a reason, other than not wanting Buffy to see too much, for refusing the aid of a super powered well-trained fighter.

"Its okay, Chloe," Jonathan said. "She knows."

Eyes widening at this news, Chloe, nonetheless, looked relieved to not be facing this alone. If Milton Fine was Kryptonian, and really wasn't playing for their side, then there could be more danger than Chloe could face alone.

Willow, confused, but understanding of the need for secrecy sometimes, stayed kneeled at Martha's side, and only looked up for a brief moment to nod farewell to Buffy.

She watched the girls leave and couldn't help but wish she were the one running off with the cute blonde into the night.

* * *

Xander squinted at the computer screen, wincing as the schematics faded from view. He had told Buffy and Willow that, without doubt, he'd be able to slip back behind his mask and return to normal life; that he could forget that he had seen his friends' decaying corpses. It was more complicated than that, he knew.

For the whole morning, he'd been having trouble with his vision. Every so often his good eye would just stop working; the world would just suddenly go black. At this point, he'd been wearing his eye patch, and he couldn't help but wonder what his new eye was doing when the old one went kaput.

"Xander," a girl said. He looked up, surprised to see one of the Slayers approaching him. The Slayers rarely bothered talking to any of the Scoobies, or even Dawn for that matter. Buffy had done her best to integrate them, but they were a slightly stuck-up and very focused group. Pleasantries weren't worked into their schedule, and they never loosened up, except in the company of food.

The girl was Scottish, and after a minute Xander recognized her as Samantha. He only knew her because during their first week in Smallville, she had nearly been killed by a meteor-rock imbued vampire and had been rather paranoid about patrol since then. She stayed inside more than any of the other Slayers, and Xander had seen her talking with Dawn, being friendly even.

"Dawn and me were wondering," she said in her slightly Americanized Scottish accent, "if you might drive us to the theatre?"

"Smallville has a theatre?" Xander asked. "All this time I've been suffering pay-per-view when I could have been grease deep in salty theatre corn?"

"The theatre in Metropolis is only forty minutes away," she said.

Xander blinked a few times as his vision faded again. Samantha's freckled face came back into view again, but then the world around her started to shine green. Forgetting the conversation, Xander grabbed a book from the table and held it over his eye, cursing the thin material of the eye patch and wondering how this could be possible. His new eye was seeing _through_ the fabric, and even now, the green outline of every inanimate object was starting to overlay his normal vision.

"I don't think I can," he muttered. Samantha moved forward, touching his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" she asked. Letting out an inhuman scream, he threw the book across the room, and tore his eye patch off. He stared at her, her living image overlain slightly to the right of the corpse. "My God," she whispered when she saw his eye, iris glowing that supernatural green.

His normal vision faded again, and he realized then that there was nothing he could do to escape this. He couldn't hide this and return to his normal life. There was nothing left for him to see—colours faded to green, and Samantha, a young, healthy teenage girl, paled to the chalky white of a long dead skeleton.

Even the plants scattered around the house had shriveled to dust.

With a whimper, he retreated into the corner. The skeleton followed him, and, from far away in the green desert, he saw another skeleton, indistinguishable from the closer one, approaching. He heard words, but they couldn't penetrate his hysteria. He felt warm hands touching him, comforting him, but even when he closed his eyes, all was left was the cold, dark embrace of death.

* * *

From the lightless caves they burst into a whole new world, where snow glowed red and an icy wind tore at their faces. Crystals the size of trees rose from the ground on angled, forming a roof over their heads, and Clark lay, crucified, on his back, with a meteor rock, glowing in stark contrast with the red sky, on his chest.

Chloe, obviously having been here before, rushed forward and grabbed the rock, and then chucked it at Buffy, who threw it far beyond view. In the sky floated something that looked, to Buffy, like a cross-dimensional portal, and she knew from experience, that mixing dimensions rarely ended well.

Clark moaned, and pulled himself up; he moved toward a console that held several crystals, most of them tinted red, and pulled out the one crystal that was black. The portal disappeared and the ice castle around them lost its red hue.

The figure that had been posted in front of the portal turned, and Buffy gasped in surprise when she saw who it was.

"Spike?" she exclaimed. She went unheard, however, because the man that looked so much like her vampire ex-lover, let out a roar of rage and launched himself at Clark.

Chloe pulled her aside and they huddled behind a crystal pillar. They pulled together to better share their warmth, and watched what proved to be one of the silliest battles Buffy had ever seen.

"There's absolutely nothing we can do to help, is there?" Buffy asked as Clark was launched, once again, across the fort.

Chloe shook her head. "I got used to being a mere mortal," she said. "Compared to them, you're a mere mortal too."

"I held my own when he was all hyped on whatever colour rock thingie," Buffy protested. "Until he tossed me like a rag doll and dislocated my shoulder."

She got a closer look at Clark's adversary as he flew their direction, and Buffy decided that it wasn't Spike at all. It could have been Spike if he'd aged ten years and thrown away his peroxide (though not, as it turns out, his hair gel), but it wasn't him.

A couple long range tosses later, Clark managed to impale the man on the console of crystals, after which he disappeared into a blaze of blue light.

"I always enjoy it when my opponent dusts after it dies," Buffy called out to Clark, who was standing, looking rather hurt, in front of where the man had previously stood. "It makes for less cleanup, at least."

"Buffy," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"We are the back-up team," Buffy said. She bounced on the balls of her foot and let loose a few punches. "Just in case you, you know, needed help."

"Chloe?" he asked, and the anger was apparent in his voice. "How could you just bring her here?"

"Your dad told me to," she said, raising her hands defensively. Clark didn't reply, but Buffy could feel the tension between the two of them, and she suspected that they'd had trust issues before.

Buffy was quickly starting to realize that there was just about no one that Clark hadn't had trust issues with.

"Let's go home," Chloe finally said. "I'm freezing."

Clark nodded, and gestured for them to follow him. Buffy touched his arm, and he turned his head halfway, so that she could only see his profile.

"Clark… is this… you know, your planet?" she asked quietly. "Are there more of you here?"

He turned, and took a look at her face, eyes wide with curiosity, her hand gripped tight on his arm. She looked so urgent, so tense, that Clark had to laugh.

"We're still on Earth, Buffy," he said. "And no, I'm the last one, as far as I know."

He raised his eyebrows when her reaction to his words seemed to be akin to disappointment.

"What?" she exclaimed. "I've done a fair bit of traveling, but I've never left Earth, and I mean," she chuckled, "if the rest of your race are as pretty as you are, I'd like to get a chance with one that doesn't already have a ring on his finger."

* * *

"The whole healing her thing," Willow stuttered, "was completely unintended. I mean, I kind of feel like I should apologize, because my spells have been dead on recently, but I've had some mishaps, and I shouldn't have presumed that I would get it right this time. This is a pleasant side effect, I guess, but bad things could have happened, like Buffy and Spike getting married, and a skinless boy and the end of the world and, I'm not saying that your wife getting better is an end of the world mistake, because it's not, it's a good mistake, but a confusing one. I should go."

Jonathan stared as she stumbled out of the house. He was starting to seriously doubt his son's ability to choose his friends.

* * *

It took Buffy's eyes almost a minute to adjust to the near completely lack of light in the caves. After staring into the blinding glory of what Clark called his _Fortress of Solitude_, she was slightly relieved to be dealing with darkness again—contrary to a child's intuition, it was safer in the dark.

What she saw was confusing and terrifying. There was the form of a body lying in the opening of the room they had appeared in, and Buffy instinctively pulled out a stake and approached it.

It wasn't the body that terrified her; it was Clark's reaction to it. With a groan, he collapsed to the ground, and Chloe dropped to her knees beside him. When Buffy got close enough to see who the body was, she froze.

There were tell-tale marks on his neck, and his face was pale in a luminescent way—much, much too pale.

His name fell from her lips like a gasp and she, too, plunged to her knees.

"Giles…"

From her position on the ground, she only glimpsed the slippers and frilly dress hem of Drusilla, but she could sense her vampire presence moments before she came into view.

"He taught me," Drusilla whispered. Buffy had similar thoughts going through her head—Giles had guided her through her trials as a Slayer, had supported her in the way she had always craved from her father. Her hand, shaking, fumbled for his neck, feeling for a pulse.

"Angelus did," she continued. "He taught me to destroy your opponent before you kill her."

She kneeled down, on the other side of the body, in a familiar way, as if she had spent too much time on her knees. "You were a strong little bunny," she whispered, reaching out to Buffy's face, but not touching. "You had your minions kill Parker; turned him right to dust. But you can't do it, can you? When your Watcher is one of us; you won't do it, will you?"

Buffy knew that Drusilla was protected; she could hear Clark moaning behind the alien pedestal. She felt her senses sharpen: her heart pounded in her ears; Chloe's heart pounded in her ears; Clarks laboured breathing sharpened, and with delicate precision, so fast even she couldn't track her movement, she drew the stake from where she had dropped it and plunged it through Drusilla's breast bone.

"Soon, my darling," Drusilla whispered. "My baby, my darling, darling, darling… soon you will dance." She pulled the stake out of her chest and placed it delicately on Giles' stomach. Her fingers flitted over his face, before she drew away.

His eyes snapped open. "Buffy," he said, sounding so much like himself that she almost backed down. He pushed himself up from the ground and stood; Buffy nervously skittered backward before rising. He spread his arms wide, and Buffy wanted nothing more than to sink into his embrace and imagine this tragedy away.

"You always did rely on me too much," he said in his crisp accent. "It disgusted me; if I wanted a daughter, don't you think I would have wanted my own?"

They moved together, always feet apart, into the main area of the caves. "You were nothing more than an assignment to me," he hissed. "I hated you, you know that? I lost my job because of you. You were such a bad Slayer; tarnishing my reputation with the Council, stealing away my chances at having my own family."

"You're not Giles," Buffy said softly. "You're just a demon. You think I won't destroy you?"

"I think you'll try," he replied. "But, ultimately, it won't be this stone that protects me; it will be your weakness."

Buffy lunged, spinning as she did, so that her first foot crossed the side of his face, and the second followed shortly after. Without pausing, she landed one last kick, this time to his chest, knocking him backward and into the cave wall. He did not get up.

She found the stone in his breast pocket, and smashed it unceremoniously on the cave wall. She gazed at him for a moment, but did not draw her stake. About to stand up, she heard a whimpering from the hidden room.

Chloe stood in the darkest corner; her lips were pressed tightly together, and a single tear snaked its way down her face.

"She took Clark," she whispered. "That terrible, ghostly woman… she came in here and she took Clark."


	9. Chapter 9

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

Chapter Nine

"Chloe," Buffy said firmly. "Chloe, look at me."

She looked up, and her face became hard. She looked less scared, more determined.

"She had green Kryptonite," she said. "She was so strong… she was a vampire?"

"Kryptonite, meteor rock," Buffy replied. "Chloe, I need you to concentrate. She didn't give any indication of where she was going?" Chloe shook her head in response. "I need you to do something for me, Chloe," Buffy continued. "I need you to go to Clark's house. Tell his parents not to invite anyone in. Don't even answer the door. Tell them that I'm going to find Clark. Then, go to my house. I'll be there, but I'm going to need your help. Can you do that?"

Chloe nodded. The woman who had come, she was dark and walked like she floated. She had these dark, innocent eyes, like a child who has been made to do terrible things. Pushing away from the wall, she stood by herself, and took off at a run. She almost screamed when she saw the body that had previously been at the mouth of the room, collapsed, instead, against a wall.

Buffy was in front of her in a moment, picking up the body with some difficulty, mostly, Chloe suspected, due to its size, rather than its weight. "Go," she insisted, and Chloe took off.

The caves weren't far from their home, and Buffy ran quickly, despite the weight of Giles on her back.

She was slightly intrigued to discover that carrying an unconscious vampire over the threshold of a house qualifies as an invitation. Several Slayers approached her as she entered, all of them asking questions; all of them concerned—Giles had been their Watcher too. One of them took him from her, and Buffy slumped into a chair.

"Take him downstairs. Spike has chains. Make sure he's secure—he's going to be hungry."

Several of the younger Slayers had not yet developed the ability to sense vampires, and their eyes widened as they realized what she was implying. Willow came down the stairs, wrapped only in a towel.

"Buffy?" she asked, as Giles was moved down the stairs.

"Drusilla got him, Will," Buffy said. Willow was scared by Buffy's voice—she sounded defeated. "You'll… you can find his soul though, right?"

"I can try, but Buffy…" she let her voice trail off. "Buffy, I'll try. I need things though, I've been doing only organic magic, and I'll need an Orb of Thusulah and herbs and… Buffy, yea, I'll get them; of course I'll get them."

"Mrs. Kent?" Buffy inquired.

"She got better, all better, all of a sudden. I don't know if it was me, or if Clark did something," Willow stammered, obviously the memory of the unexpected outcome of the spell still weighing on her.

"Good. They should only need to worry about so much." She raised her voice, calling out to all the girls hanging around the living room. "I need all of you on patrol. Drusilla has kidnapped Clark, and we need to get him back as soon as possible. Report back here every twenty minutes."

Without waiting for a response, she took off, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

"You're pretty."

The words cut through the haze that his world had become. He could feel his blood churning inside his arteries; could imagine his stomach trying to escape his body.

"Pretty like a little rag dolly, aren't you?"

Her voice was pitched like a little girl's, high and dainty. Her accent was pleasantly European, and she sounded as if she wanted nothing more than to float away.

"I had a dolly of my own, once. I had a dolly, and I was a dolly, and Angelus and Spike and Darla and me, we were a family. But that girl, that Buffy, she took it away… all away. Now, little dolly, I have to dance alone."

The pain began to wane, slowly, and his vision returned; his dark surroundings coming into view at last. He was in some sort of crypt, he thought; there was a large stone coffin in the middle of the room, and leaves and sticks littered the floor. He moaned and tried to move; as he did dust flew around him, clouding his sight once more.

"Don't move please, pretty dolly," she muttered, and from the clouds of dust a delicate hand floated toward him. It stroked down his sweat soaked face and then touched his mouth.

"You don't speak much, do you?"

A face was visible through the cloud of dust, now. Large dark eyes were framed by long lashes and ethereal pale skin. Black hair curled around, surrounding her face, and cascading past her pointed chin.

"All your secrets, they sew your mouth shut, do they?"

Clark coughed; the pain from the Kryptonite still pungent, still intense. "What do you want with me?" he managed to say.

"I sent Buffy a shiny present," she muttered, as if she weren't talking to someone so much as conversing with herself. "A boyfriend from a lifetime ago, and then, today, another one: a Watcher for her to grapple with; a gifty to unwrap.

"Now, my bunny," she continued, "I'm going to send you to her. Little, bite sized pieces of you, moments at a time. She could love you, someday, and that is something I can't abide. Bad Buffy, bad, bad. Buffy doesn't get to smile, not for love, not for the stars."

The pain lessened even more, and Clark could see now that she was holding the rock away from him. He recognized her, finally, as though only once the pain had subsided could his brain function properly. She had been the one who had tried to shoot Buffy; he wondered what Buffy had done to make this woman hate her so much.

_Woman_, he thought, not, not a woman; she was a vampire, a demon. Anything Buffy had done was justified—this creature was evil.

"So we're going to play a game. I like games."

She held out a chain, on which a red stone hung. The chain was long and golden, and the rock swayed from the movement of her hand. Clark could feel the effects before it even touched him—it was red Kryptonite.

"During the day, darling, you roam free. You will watch the Slayer, and you will tell me everything. Every night you return to me, or I will find your parents, and they will be a delightful snack."

She leaned forward, the white frills of her dress scratching at Clark's face, and fastened the chain around his neck. Immediately, Clark felt the power; he felt his inhibitions slip away from him and, even through the pain that the green rock caused, he felt _almost_ strong… _almost_ free.

She tucked the necklace into his shirt, and then stood, slowly. She backed away, and the further away she got, the stronger Clark felt. Once she had left the mausoleum he pushed himself stiffly to his feet, sore from his prolonged exposure to the green rock; exhilarated from his new exposure to the red one.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, reveling in his newfound liberation. These feelings were so familiar, and he suddenly felt like a bomb about to burst; he had so many things he needed to say, to do.

And much like a bomb, he realized that his explosion might cause some damage. He found himself growing more comfortable with the notion with every passing moment.

* * *

Dawn sat at the top of the stairs and listened. She spent a lot of time observing the crazy household that she lived in; she had once deemed herself 'Watcher junior', and it was never truer than now.

She lived with eleven Slayers, often more than that, and she was only kept around because she was Buffy's little sister. She had no powers, no special talents, and the only achievement she had of her own was her outstanding admissions average. It barely set her apart though; many Slayers were sharp in mind as well as equipped with super strength and speed. These girls, however, didn't bother attending formal school, so she had nothing to compare against.

And now, here she was, Central Kansas University, when she had been accepted to universities all over Europe. Her life, turned all over, for Buffy… again.

So she watched. Giles, newly vamped, was in the basement. Spike was sitting with him, good naturedly taunting the evil old boy, and as much as Dawn loved Giles, she couldn't bare to see him like this.

She heard the front door open, and a female voice called, "Buffy? Willow?" Dawn recognized her—it was Chloe, Willow's new friend. She sounded worried, upset even. Willow was upstairs on the phone with her magic connections, and Buffy was still out looking for Clark, so Dawn unfolded herself and rose from the stair she sat on.

"Chloe," she replied. "What's wrong?"

"It's Clark," she said. She was panting, and her face was pink, as though she'd been wind burnt. "He's been kidnapped."

"Yeah," Dawn said curtly. With Xander near hysteria in the living room and Giles a vampire in the basement, she was hardly sympathetic for other people's problems. Clark was a big boy, and possessed certain abilities that the human population was not generally privy to; she was sure he could handle himself. "The girls are out looking for him. They better find him soon, because Xander is still insisting that he needs to see him."

"Xander? Why?"

"I've no idea. Clark seemed a bit clueless to me," Dawn replied. Lashing out was the one way she had learned of protecting herself; she knew that she was turning into the bitch of the century, and had stopped caring.

"Is that really what you thought?"

Both girls' heads snapped toward the sound of the voice. Clark was standing there, unprecedented by noise or smell. He had this expression on his face, and Chloe identified it a split second before Dawn did.

He looked just like how he did in that photograph, Dawn thought. He smiled like his own, private joke was funniest; like it was his secret to keep and chuckle at.

"Because," he continued, moving closer to Dawn, "it seemed, to me at least, like you had a little crush on me." He moved the tips of his fingers down her arm, and Dawn couldn't help but shiver at his touch.

"Rambling on like you have something to prove," he muttered, "as if you had something to offer…"

Dawn stiffened at his words, echoing, almost verbatim, her recurring thoughts.

"Is the wardrobe the first thing to go?" Chloe said with an air of confidence that she truly did not have at this moment. This was Clark like he'd been in Metropolis; this was Clark on red Kryptonite.

He looked down at his body, fully clothed in black, and then checked out his hair in the arbor mirror. "It makes me feel sexy," he said, pouting at the mirror, "uninhibited. You know? The flannel is great for farming, but it doesn't do wonders for my physique."

He turned back to Chloe and grinned. "But you're kind of excited, aren't you? Maybe Clark Kent will finally let you in an inch; maybe you'll finally find out what he really thinks of you…"

Chloe raised her chin defiantly when she heard those words, though the thought had briefly flitted across her mind. She knew that Clark was always able to read people, though he was usually polite enough not to act out on what he saw.

As she watched, Clark's face hardened. "He doesn't."

Those words, spoken so callously, were more painful than she had expected them to be. She had always known, though never fully accepted, that he was in love with Lana for the long run; she had hoped that one day he might grow into her.

Willow wandered down the stairs at that point, and Clark's head jerked toward the sound. He moved around to the front of the stairs, and within a second, he was halfway up them, and Willow's shirt was bunched in his fist.

"Willow," he said in a deceptively calm voice. "Playing witchcraft games on me? It isn't cool," he shook his head slowly. His words were calculated; deliberate, as if he were scolding a child. He lifted her up and slammed her against the wall, before leaning himself against the banister.

"You try anything like that with me again," he hissed, "and I will kill you." Willow let out a whimper, and Clark dropped her, and moved slowly back down the stairs. At this point, the noise had brought the three Slayers that had returned from patrol out from the living room, and they all stared, wide eyed, at Clark. Two of them held weapons limply in their hands.

"Where's Buffy?" he asked them.

"She should be back soon," one of the girls answered, her voice loud and confident. Slayers were trained to be fighters, and fighters did not show fear.

Clark could feel the power pumping in his temple, just short of pain. He knew, from his romp in Metropolis, that being under the influence of red Kryptonite for too long would have serious repercussions, but it was too early in the game to care. He felt like the rope that had been holding his secrets just out of reach of the people in his life had been cut, and he was far too stoned to try to catch them before they crashed.

So he helped them fall, instead.

* * *

Buffy had stayed out for longer than she'd planned; she'd pushed twenty five minutes before she even thought about going back to regroup with the rest of the girls. She was angry and looking for a fight—Giles was almost a father to her, and even if Willow could get his soul back, he'd never be the same again. The curse that Angel had suffered for over a hundred years would now be Giles' to bear, and he'd have to forever alienate himself, staying just far enough away from those he loved to be _not quite_ happy.

She approached the house, and as she opened the door, she could feel the tension, a low vibrato, thickly coating the room.

"Clark?" she said, surprised to see him standing there, looking fine. "You were kidnapped…" she muttered.

He had strayed far from his usual uniform of fleece and blue jeans, and Buffy couldn't help but notice that he looked really _good_. He moved toward her, and he seemed different; he had this shine in his eyes, like a predator.

In one smooth movement, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into him, crushing them together with inhuman strength. With his other hand, he tipped her chin upward, and met her eye for a moment before he came crashing onto her.

The kiss was different than any kiss she'd experienced before. The boys she'd been with, they all had experience, some of them hundreds of years of experience, and had moved against her with practiced ease and comfort, often passion. This boy though, his mouth was possessed by pure instinct. Buffy felt her back arching into his body, her neck stretched toward him, his arm holding her up as her torso came to rest against his.

It was not the best kiss she'd ever had, but it was certainly the most breathtaking, and when he pulled away, she slowly opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of a man… not Clark Kent, exactly, but someone similar.

"Since I met you," he whispered huskily, their lips coming close to each other again, "I've been wondering how you taste…" He leaned into her again and bit softly at her lower lip. Suddenly, Buffy could feel the eyes watching them—her little sister, her students, her best friend, and the stranger, and she drew away from Clark. They stood, not far away, in a semi circle, some holding weapons; all of them looked shocked.

Clark stepped back, too, and he smiled in a dashing, knee-weakening way. "I'm glad I got that out of my system," he said. He did not approach her again, but instead, moved toward the door.

"It's been great," he said, addressing the whole room, and then he disappeared, leaving the door hanging open.

* * *

Xander had been forgotten about while Clark had stood in the room—but it was all Xander could do to keep from crying out when the boy had strode into the house.

He had been watching three corpses battle in the living room for ten minutes, and they were beyond recognition. It was interesting, at least, to watch skeletons moving like they were alive, and he had found that his new eye refused to let up: when he blinked, he saw through his eye lids. When he wore his eye patch, he saw through that too.

His normal vision still faded in and out, but it was mostly gone now, leaving him with the faint green glow of nearby objects and the people he loved etched out in ashes.

But when Clark had pushed through the door, through the soot and death, Xander could see him. He was wearing mostly black, but his cheeks and hands were featured in full colour; the only relief from the radioactive green he could see.

He had forgotten how beautiful humanity was, and the boy standing on the other side of the room drew a gasp from his lips. He tried to stand, tried to move toward him, to ask him_ how_… _why_? The pain in his head was growing sharper now, to the point where moving made him nauseous, and the idea of trekking all the way across the room made his hands shake.

He had realized, from listening to the talking skeletons, that Giles was dead. Drusilla had turned him into a vampire; this meant something, he knew. This meant that his power had been mildly useful, the same way that Chloe had told Willow; he suspected though, with the intensity of his vision growing, and the pain in his head throbbing a little stronger, that it was quickly turning into the other kind of power.

The deadly kind.

* * *

"Buffy," Chloe said, breaking the stunned silence that followed Clark's departure. "We should follow him."

"Where do you think he would go?" Buffy asked, obviously regaining her composure.

"Metropolis," she replied. "Lana."

Unable to suppress the twinge of jealously she felt upon watching the two blondes leave together again, Willow had to admit that she had some feelings for the new girl. She put those feelings aside, and was betting on them staying to the side for a while—Chloe seemed straight and completely focused on her unrequited love for Clark.

There had been moments, when they had been close together, looking at the same computer screen, when their cheeks would brush together… a scream of rage from the basement removed her solidly from her thoughts.

Willow had struggled to her feet shortly after Clark had left her slumped on the stairs, and had watched Clark until he left. This was surely the Clark that they had been warned about, though what had brought it on was still unapparent.

She returned, now, to the place where she had fallen, and gathered up the magic supplies she had been holding. A friend of hers from a prominent demon law firm had delivered them only minutes earlier; they had been expensive and difficult to get a hold of. Willow had never truly appreciated how easy magic supplies were to come by when she had lived on the Hellmouth.

The orb of Thusulah was thankfully unbroken, and she placed them all carefully in the crook of her arm before heading toward the basement, where Giles was still chained to the wall.

She was sidetracked when she heard a whimper from the living room. She changed tracks quickly, and was shocked to see that Xander was still sitting, his knees drawn up to his chin.

They hadn't forgotten about him—far from it, but with Giles out of commission and Buffy worrying more about Clark's problems than her own, there was no one qualified to even begin to help him.

Willow had been researching, in between helping the Kents and Giles, but she was very far out of her field. Dealing with radiation mutations that seemed to be fueled by something more than technology but less than magic was just out of Willow's reach. Technology was her specialty; magic was her passion, but these meteor rocks escaped her completely.

So now, watching Xander, so obviously in pain, she did not feel hopeful; she did not feel inspired. She just felt scared.

Reaching out with her free hand, she touched Xander's face. "Will?" he rasped.

"Xand?" she replied. "Are you okay?"

"Willow, it… it hurts…"

It was then that Willow realized how bad it was. They had been to the doctors that had operated on him, and they had been clueless about these adverse side effects. Previously, it had been the grotesque visions that had been their primary concern, but pain? This was new, and completely unprecedented.

"It's Clark," he said slowly, his voice sounding rough and unused. "He's the only one that's still alive…"

She let out a gasp as he began to seize, falling sideways onto the floor. His arms and legs jerked so erratically that Willow was wary of approaching him, but she could tell by the way his head was wrenching that he was going to hurt himself further.

"Spike!" she called. Though he was remained stonily underground when Clark had been there, he came to the surface now, looking paler and more cranky than normal. Willow put the magic supplies down on the ground and rushed forward, holding down Xander's head and shoulders, trying to keep his spine stable. She grunted as his arms escaped and smacked her across the face.

Coming closer, Spike approached, presumably his soul keeping his snide comments under control, and took Willow's place. "We've got to get him to a hospital, Red," he said forcefully.

The seizing slowed, and Xander relaxed, flat on his back for a moment, before he started to cough. Blood flew upward and hit Spike in the face. He jumped back as if it had burned him and Willow moved forward, turning him on his side, where he continued to spit blood onto the carpet.

"Move him into the car," she demanded, before realizing that it was daylight. "Nevermind. Go watch Giles." Spike wiped the blood off of his face, looking disgusted with himself, and picked up Xander.

She froze when she saw that the bag with the magic supplies was lying much closer than she had thought she had placed it. Carefully pulling away the leather, she saw exactly what she had been dreading.

The orb of Thusulah was broken.

* * *

He had made the trip in record time, and four minutes and twenty seven seconds after his kiss with Buffy, Clark was standing outside of Lana's dormitory room.

Instead of entering right away, he leaned silently against the door frame and gazed through the wood.

She was sitting where he suspected she would be: in front of her lap top and she was using a program that Clark had never seen before. It was a sophisticated looking program that showed trajectories of meteors that had fallen more than a decade before. He saw, right away, the path of motion that was being held in question—instead of following a parabolic path, it curved into the surface of the Earth, making for a smoother, more gradual landing than the meteors had experienced.

She minimized this program, and what was underneath seemed to be even worse; even more a violation on Clark's privacy. It was the spaceship—not his, but the one that had landed during the second shower.

There had always been that thread of doubt in his mind that told him that Lana, with all her preaching about secrets and lies, would never look him in the eye and tell him anything other than the truth. In the hospital, though, he had been looking for confirmation, and she had blatantly sidestepped his question and reassured him that his hallucinations had clearly been outrageous and false.

The betrayal he felt was as sharp as it had been when he had discovered that Chloe had been looking into his adoption, or when Lex had been researching the car crash that had almost killed him. He knew that, in the same way, Lana would not understand why this was a betrayal; why her interests cut him so deep.

He smiled as he felt the freedom that the red Kryptonite had given him. He knew that today, with his new openness—just like she had always asked for!—he could make her understand.


	10. Chapter 10

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

_Buffy the vampire slayer _and all of its related elements belong to Fox, the WB and Joss Whedon.

* * *

Okay, so, right on schedule, here's the final chapter (2 weeks after the first chapter was posted). I'm fairly pleased, since I have a tremendously short attention span and have never actually managed to finish anything before.

Thanks again to everyone who has responded. Those of you who haven't... well I don't blame you, since I'm generally a lurker myself, but even short comments are very appreciated.

Special thanks goes to MysticWolf1, whose constructive critism has been hugely awesome.

Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Ten

Slowly, Clark turned the knob. It wasn't locked, so he pushed it open, stepped sideways over the threshold, and closed the door before Lana could even look up.

"Clark," she said, sounding pleased, and she turned back to her computer, moving to close the laptop, but he moved quickly and silently so that he was behind her, and he placed a hand on hers.

"No, please," he said, a charming smile placed firmly on his face. "I'd like to see this."

He kneeled next to her. "It looks like… some sort of space ship or something," he said, allowing a stream of confusion and doubt to enter his voice. "But, that's not possible, is it? I mean, you would have shared something this big with me."

Her head tilted sideways slightly, "How did you get over here so fast?" she asked.

"Long legs in a small room," he said, truthfully. "In the hospital, you let me believe that Lex telling you about a spaceship was a fabrication of my imagination," he said, squinting at her as if his x-ray vision might better see through the lies.

"I—" she looked down at her lap. "Every time I try to bring up the ship I saw, you change the subject," she said, starting to feel justified in being angry. "Those meteor showers changed my life and you were willing to dismiss it, like it was nothing."

"So… you lied," Clark said. "Lana Lang, the upstanding citizen, the advocate for truth and openness, kept something from me? Lied, straight to my face? So that you could spend some time with Lex?"

"Lex is interested in finding the truth," she said, her voice sounding venomous.

"There's that word again," Clark said, standing up. "Do you really think that secrets aren't kept for a reason? You turned to Lex because he's willing to give you all truth, all the time? Well, Lex is an idiot." He backed up, and looked her over. "You're an idiot."

Lana stood up, too, knocking her chair over. The way he was acting, it was irrational, out of character.

"If honesty is what you really want, then I can give it to you," Clark hissed. "But I'm not going to promise it isn't going to hurt. Is trust what you need? You're so hungry for someone to trust you that you'd turn to him?"

He grabbed her arm and drew her close, and a small part of him ached when he heard her wince in pain. "You think that Lex automatically trusts you, just because he showed you his spaceship? I could show you my spaceship, would that make you happy?"

A gasp escaped Lana's lip. "What did you just say?" she demanded. He pushed her away from him and turned away, looked back at the laptop, the posters on the walls, anywhere but her. Close to the surface, he was enjoying this conversation, but Lana had always been the one person who had been able to reach him through his red Kryptonite rages, and that he had hurt her weighed on his conscience, even now.

A conversation that had occurred days before flashed through his mind, in which Lana had addressed a problem that Clark had known, as soon as his powers had been returned, would come up. "We haven't been together, since I came to Met U," she had said. "I can't help but think that this has something to do with Buffy." The accusation, so pure and assuming, had pained him at the time, had pushed him further away from her and he had shut it out; pretended it hadn't happened. It bubbled to the surface, taking the place of secrets and lies as his issue of the moment.

"Or would sex make you happy?" he asked, turning back to look at her. "I think you said it best though: if you're going to be all needy and insecure, maybe we need to reevaluate this relationship."

Lana flinched as if she'd been struck. "Clark, why are you acting like this?" she said softly, lividly.

"Maybe you just didn't think that there might be consequences to our actions," he said. He grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around, and placed her against the wall. He pressed his body up against hers, and he could feel her wanting to move away, to escape. "What?" he asked. "Not in the mood?" He laughed.

"There are always consequences, Lana," he whispered into her ear. With one hand, he moved the hair off of her face. "I mean, the sky started falling the last time _you_ poked someone with a rock hard—oh…" he smiled. "You don't even know, do you? More secrets, more lies, my fault of course, for wanting to protect you." He let her go, and she managed to recover herself before she fell.

"But this is the new Clark," he roared. Lana drew breath sharply, her nostrils flaring. He was acting unreasonable; he was too angry, too confrontational. It seemed like he'd saved it all up for now, and was finally letting lose without inhibitions. He was acting like he had in Metropolis.

"The Clark Kent you know is a lie," he had said before he had left.

"What do you mean: the sky falling?" she asked tersely.

"You were right, Lana, the second meteor shower wasn't a coincidence," he said, sounding calmer than he had all night. "You killed someone with the stone you brought me, didn't you?"

She stiffened. "I wasn't myself," she said. "It was Isobel."

"Yeah, that explanation would hold up in court," he sneered. "You should know more than anyone that it's your fault, regardless of who has the steering wheel," Clark said, spreading his arms. "Or does that rule only apply to me?"

She stayed silent. "I mean," he said, "if this is the real me, then everything I've said to you, all the things I've done, they're all a lie too." He approached her, and pressed his finger against her chest. "Your body, your responsibility. I have full liability for everything that happened what Lionel Luthor took over my body, you made that clear. Lois blames me for everything that happened when I was brainwashed by my biological father. So yeah, you contaminated the stone; the meteor shower was your fault."

Everything that Clark was saying, it made no sense. How could what she had done have anything to do with the meteor shower? "Your biological father?" she asked, eyes wide.

"Dead," Clark said. He winced, and brought his hand up to his throat.

"How?"

"A massive explosion," he said deliberately. "He was a real bastard anyway."

"How could the meteor shower be my fault?" she said, because this was, by far, the simplest question she could put straight in her mind. Clark had never been this open with her, and, as confusing and terrifying as it was, it was also kind of refreshing. It created so many questions, so many inconsistencies that she had no idea whether he was being more truthful now, or whether the quiet, subdued Clark had it right.

"You really didn't think you'd be punished?" he asked.

"By who?" she demanded. He grinned widely.

"The Lord above," he yelled, sounding sarcastic. "Who else?"

* * *

The amount of blood that Xander had vomited had been worrying, even to the doctors. They had taken him in immediately, despite his slightly lapsed insurance, and Willow had assured the doctors that Lex Luthor would be footing all the bills.

Fifteen terrifying minutes later, the doctor returned to Willow. He had questions for her, mostly regarding Xander's eye transplant, and Willow answered as many as she could without divulging too much.

Xander was sedated in the hospital room, and the doctor spoke quietly, urgently. "He seems to have come in contact with some very large amounts of radiation," he said. "We've seen similar cases like these in the very elderly here in Smallville; we suspect it might have something to do with the substance that fell in the meteor showers."

"Similar cases?" Willow asked, her voice shaking. "What does that mean? What's wrong with him?"

"He has several large tumors, two in his brain and one in his liver. We've booked the OR so that we can do an immediate biopsy, but if they're malignant, then they're probably inoperable. Has Mr. Harris been taking an immunosuppressant for his eye transplant? Because that would explain the rapid growth of these tumors."

Willow felt the world slow to a stop. _Inoperable_ meant that there was nothing the doctors could do. They would pump him full of chemicals and hope for the best. Xander would lose his hair, he would become pale and underweight; and then he would die. Her hands began to shake.

"How much time?" she asked. "If they're malignant, how much time does he have?"

The doctor's expression was sober. "Maybe a month; probably much less."

Willow could feel her magic broiling below the surface, and she wished, more than anything, that she could let it loose, that she could tear the cancer from his body and heal him, the way that she had pulled the bullet from Buffy.

She hated, so much, that she had learned her lesson. That sort of magic, that kind of power, was impossible to harness. Using power that strong could end the world. It was the reason why disease hadn't been eradicated by witches. Without restraint, she'd have never been able to return from her madness.

Without Xander, she'd have never been able to return.

"Thank you, doctor," she whispered.

Without Xander, her best friend since they'd been able to talk, she'd be missing a part of herself larger than she could have ever expected, and now, with the prospect of his death so close at hand, she could feel herself hollowing out.

She placed her hand on her heart and waited while a tear rolled down her face and came to rest on the corner of her mouth. The hole was right next to the one that Tara had left.

* * *

During the drive, Chloe had talked about Kryptonite. There were different colours, it seemed, and when Clark had attacked her last, he had been under the influence of silver Kryptonite. This recent attack, of the slightly sexual variety, was because of red Kryptonite.

"His parents keep this in the house," she said, pulling a lead box out of her purse. A green rock glowed inside.

"And this will make him slightly punch-able?" Buffy asked. "He won't throw me like a football across the room?"

"He'll drop like a stone," Chloe assured her.

Buffy continued to watch Chloe drive, and Chloe looked back at her quickly, before turning back to the road. "What's up?" she asked.

"Weird question," Buffy said, "and totally not meant to imply what you're going to assume it does, but, are you attracted to girls, ever? I mean, even slightly, or simply in a neutral sense?"

Chloe laughed. "You're starting with the personal questions, aren't you?" she asked. "This doesn't have anything to do with Willow, does it?"

Buffy sighed. "Yeah, actually, it does."

"Willow's great, she really is," Chloe said, blinking a few times, and trying to conduct the conversation in a polite way, sneaking in eye contact between driving. "I have so much to learn from her, and she's funny and nice and all that awesome stuff." She shrugged. "I've far from set my sexuality in stone; I'm still just a teenager, but right now…"

"You're holding out for Clark," Buffy whispered. When Chloe didn't answer, Buffy continued, "I'm sorry you had to see that. The kiss, I mean."

Chloe shrugged. "We're here," she offered.

Buffy opened the box and placed the stone carefully in her fist. She stepped out of the car and threw a practice punch with it in her hand.

"Remember," Chloe said, "get the red Kryptonite away from him. I just hope we got here in time."

"Come up behind me," Buffy said. "I could use backup."

They moved quickly through the residence and long before they reached the room they could hear the argument.

"The Lord above," Clark's voice raged. "Who else?"

"Clark, what are you talking about?" Lana yelled back. "You are acting insane."

Buffy was always one to make an entrance, so she kicked the door open. Both parties involved in the heated argument turned toward her.

"Clark," she said, as if she were surprised to see him standing there. "Didn't we talk about this? Gentlemen are nice to the ladies and never raise their voice."

"Buffy," he replied. He winced. "What's that you have there?"

"Just my fists, Kent," she replied, bringing her hands up to a defensive position. "Just my fists."

She knew what she had to do to protect his secret from Lana—though he was acting strangely, she had still made him a promise, and she intended to keep it.

In a flash of movement that was almost too fast to see, Buffy rushed forward. She could see the meteor rock starting to affect him as she moved closer, and she made she that she had landed her first, very powerful kick before he had time to fall.

Lana let out the scream of a terrified lover, and watched as Buffy rolled him onto his back and mounted him. Her punch knocked his head sideways and sent blood spattering over the carpet.

"You're hurting him," Lana shrieked.

"Better him than you," Buffy pointed out, twisting around to look at her. "He didn't hurt you, did he?" Clark moaned; Lana glanced at her arm and shook her head vigorously.

Buffy turned back to Clark, and regarded him with a distrustful eye. He was crippled now, but he wasn't cured. She thought quickly: she had to get him out of the room so that she could search his body without arising Lana's suspicions.

"You're a jerk, you know that, Kent?" she said scathingly. "You're nice Clark," she continued, landing a punch with her Kryptonite-enforced fist, "and then you're mean Clark," she punched his face with her other hand, jerking his head to the side with force that could damage.

"And you're goddamn confusing the girls," she said, punching him again, for emphasis.

Clark spat blood out onto the carpet, and laughed. "You're gorgeous when you're angry," he sputtered.

With a final punch, she knocked him unconscious, and stood, grabbing his arms, and started dragging him from the room. "Listen," she said to Lana, "the sight of me beating your boyfriend here is clearly bothering you. I'll take this outside." Before Lana could protest, she pushed his large frame around the door and slammed it.

Chloe stood just outside the door. "Hold it shut," Buffy demanded. Placing the meteor rock a little bit farther away from Clark, she started searching his body. She found, after not too long, a thin chain with a small red stone attached around his neck. From inside the dorm room, Lana was pulling on the door, trying to get it open; she sounded livid.

Snapping the chain off of Clark's neck, she brought it down to the ground with tremendous force. She took the meteor rock and dropped it into the lead box that Chloe offered her. Slowly, Clark's eyes opened.

"You remember?" Buffy asked. Clark's eyes opened wider and he pushed himself up off the ground.

"Lana is on the other side of the door," Buffy continued. "I can either leave you for the dogs, or haul you down to Chloe's car." She frowned, but took his hand in a comforting way. "You can figure out what you're going to say to her later. Chloe will make up an excuse. From what I hear, she's good at that."

Obviously still feeling the aftereffects of the green Kryptonite, Clark nodded, his head quivering. Buffy hauled his arm over her shoulder and lifted him to his feet. Lana continued yelling from inside her dorm room; Buffy couldn't help but notice that Clark looked terrified. What, she wondered, had he said to her? He had told her before how scared he was that Lana would discover his secret and hate him for it—had he let something slip?

* * *

Spike had some sympathy for the guy. He'd been through the same thing that Giles was going through now, and he knew the hunger of the reborn—it was a feeling that never left a vampire's mind. He brought Giles some of his pig's blood, and though at first he had spit at Spike and thrown the blood aside, he accepted the second mug of heated blood grudgingly.

"From what I hear," Spike said, "you've been cut a break. Willow says that the orb of Thusulah has been broken; for not the first time, your buddy Xander has come through for you. Having a soul is painful. You wouldn't like it."

"You've got yourself a soul, haven't you?" Giles asked. "You're vile, dirty, scum," he hissed.

"I know, mate," Spike said. "But we all do dumb shit for love."

Their heads both snapped toward the stairs as they heard someone approaching. It was Buffy, looking enraged.

"Drusilla," she said. "You can find her?"

"Yeah, but, Buffy," Spike said. "There's something you should know."

"I understand, she's nuts; she's dangerous, but she threw Parker in my face, killed Giles like I'd just take it lying down, and then turned Clark against us. Do you really think that I'm going to let her walk? You spent a hundred years with her, but you offered to kill her for me once before. You don't need to kill her, just take me to her."

Spike could see the anger in her eyes, flashing like knives in a Samurai's expert hands. "Buffy," he said, quietly. "It's Xander; he's really sick. Willow brought him to the hospital."

Her stance stiffened, and he could see that she was getting defensive; putting her walls up around her.

"There's more," he said softly. "Buffy, the orb of Thusulah, it broke."

"Willow will get another one," she said, without hesitating.

"Willow had to pull every one of her contacts from Wolfram and Hart in order to get that one," Spike said, remembering what Willow had said before she left. "Willow can't get another."

He saw, even in the dark basement light, that she had changed. Her eyes widened, and she got that look that he had seen only a few times before—when Buffy let her emotions take over, she didn't look sad so much as petrified.

If Giles couldn't be cursed, if he couldn't get his soul back, then there was nothing left to discuss. There was no way of forcing the demon that inhabited him now to endure physical and emotional torture in order to earn his soul back, the way Spike had. And without a soul he was nothing but a monster.

The kind of monster he had trained her to kill.

"Giles," she said, moving forward. She tripped and landed on her knees, barely wincing at the pain that shot through her legs. "This is hard… it's hard, I mean, to see you like this." The vampire hissed at her, but before he could say anything, she continued. "But I've had to destroy the ones I love before. You've trained me well, Giles, and I am strong. What I am today, the woman I've become, I could never have even glimpsed in myself before I met you."

She felt a tear roll down her face, and she wiped it away, angrily. "I love you, Giles," she whispered, "so much." The vampire met her eyes, and for a moment, Buffy convinced herself that she could see Giles looking through at her.

In a swift motion, she drew her stake and threw it; it spiraled towards him, the force of her anger, her regret and her grief fueling the throw. She let out a sob as it struck, and she forced her eyes open, watching as his body turned to dust. Another cry slipped from between her lips, and she hated herself for crying, but it was as if she'd just killed her father.

Cold arms wrapped around her, and she looked up into Spike's eyes. He held her as she cried, and Buffy took comfort in his familiar embrace.

* * *

Buffy's anger was palpable throughout the house. She stormed up the stairs to her bedroom, and when one of the Slayers saw her running back down the stairs, her red scythe gripped tight in her white-knuckled grip, she quickly called to the other Slayers.

Some of them had been potentials in the battle against the first, and recognized, right away, the power flowing off of her. She had been angry before—she had decapitated the Turok-Han vampire with a wire from a construction site; she had saved them from the 'uber-vamps' after they had fallen victim to Kaleb's trap. Her strength, as the true Chosen One, was legendary among the Slayers.

Spike followed close behind her, and soon they had a stream of Slayers following them. Even Dawn, looking more worried than intrigued, joined the cluster. That Buffy was too focused to tell her to stay home perturbed Dawn even more.

He led them, not surprisingly, to a crypt in the cemetery. Without hesitation, she pulled the door of the crypt open and walked inside. It was barely nightfall, and Drusilla was still sprawled on the top of the large stone coffin.

Buffy moved forward, and brought the scythe down in a smooth, powerful motion. It stopped less than a centimeter away from her neck.

"Drusilla," Buffy said. "Get up."

"You're angry," Drusilla said, her soft, baby voice grating against Buffy's already drawn out nerves. "I never told you the rules of the game."

"No, you didn't," Buffy replied. "But I can tell you the rules of my game."

"It isn't your game we're playing," Drusilla sang back.

"Yes," Buffy said, firmly. "It is. The rules are simple. You hurt someone I love, and I destroy you."

The Slayers, five or six of them, as well as Dawn and Spike—both of them hiding behind the Slayers—had gathered in the tomb, leaving very little space for a decent fight. Drusilla moved awkwardly, but efficiently, moving away from Buffy's attacks with apparent ease. She was an old, skilled vampire, and had killed a Slayer before.

Now, she was protected by the space stones, and didn't seem to be worried, despite the army of Slayers standing at her doorway.

Buffy could feel her eyes beginning to water; it seemed far too soon, she thought, to be thinking of moving on. Giles was dead, murdered by this demon; but she pushed her feelings down, refusing to let her tears cloud her vision.

She was advancing on Drusilla, boxing her into a corner. She shifted her grip on the scythe, grabbing it by the handle that was directly behind the large blade, and she pushed Drusilla up against the wall, pressing the blade against her pale neck.

Drusilla started to giggle, her laughs sounding half caught in her throat. "You can't possibly think you can kill me," she muttered. "Even when I'm gone, my ghost will live on… in Angelus, in my dear Spike…"

Buffy snarled, and freed one hand. This one inched down her neck, just below the blade, until it found the thin chain, identical to the one that Clark had word. It snapped just as easily, and Buffy tossed it aside.

"Bitch," she growled, and the blade slid through her neck like a knife through water.

* * *

Willow looked up from where she sat at Xander's bedside. Buffy and Dawn, clutching hands, had just come in.

"We just got the results of the biopsy," Willow whispered. "I've been trying to call you."

"I had to deal with Giles," Buffy said. "He's gone, Will."

"Drusilla?" she asked.

"She's gone, too."

Buffy stood next to Willow, and placed her hand on top of Willow's. "Is he going to pull through?" she asked, softly.

Willow's face crumpled and Buffy pulled her up, wrapping her arms around her. They stood, Willow sobbing into Buffy's shoulder, while Dawn moved to Xander's side. Buffy reached out and took Dawn's hand, and the three of them stayed there, watching Xander's unconscious form, for a long time.

"It isn't fair," Dawn whispered.

Buffy met her eyes, and for a while she said nothing. The words that finally escaped her lips seemed so hopeless; so unreal. "It never is, Donny." She shook her head, looking shocked and devastated. "It never is…"

* * *

"_When she asks questions, Clark, you have to give her answers. It doesn't matter if they're truth, if you're not ready for that. But you have to give her something_."

Clark waited, up in his loft, Buffy's words echoing deep in his mind. She had spoken with strength, assurance, and had said what Chloe and his parents had never been brave enough to say.

"_If you can't tell the truth, then the next best thing is an elaborate lie."_

He had fabricated, had spoken to those who knew the truth: Chloe, his parents. They had disapproved, his parents at least, but had agreed in the end; it was necessary.

"_Stick to as much of the truth as possible."_

He could hear Lana's car approaching from down the road, and he felt like this was the rehearsal for a play he hadn't practiced enough for.

"_Try to encompass everything that needs to be explained in one lie. Juggling too many lies can become messy."_

"Lana," he said, as he saw her head appear. "I'm glad you came."

"I wasn't sure I was going to," she said, looking nervous. "I didn't know which Clark was going to be here to greet me."

"Lana," he said again. "I can't—"

"Explain it?" she asked. "I wasn't expecting you to. Secrets are kept for a reason, right?"

"—tell you how sorry I am," Clark finished. "I'm going to try my best to explain; I owe you that."

Lana couldn't place what was different about Clark, but perhaps it was just the stark contrast between the soft spoken boy that faced her now, and the confrontational man that had fought with her in her dorm room. That he was talking though, was an improvement on the Clark that she knew.

"You remember the silver meteor rock?" he said. "How it made me paranoid, violent?"

Nodding, Lana wondered how she could possibly forget the crazed look in his eyes, his pale visage.

"There's another kind of meteor rock," he continued. "It's red, and it affects me too. It makes me act," he chuckled, nervously, "like a big jerk, I guess?"

The first thought that struck Lana was that he was lying. It was too clean, too convenient, to be able to blame his extreme behaviour on the meteor rocks.

"Lana, you have to believe me," he said, reached out to her. She flinched away, her hand moving to her bruised arm. "I would never hurt you intentionally. Every part of me was screaming out, but I couldn't control myself." He closed his eyes for a second, letting the feel of his first true lie wash over him. He had loved every moment of it, at the time, and though now it made him feel ill, at the time only the smallest part of him had protested.

"Why?" she demanded.

When he didn't answer, she said again, "Why do the meteors affect you like that?"

"I've never seen anyone else infected by the red or silver meteor rocks," he said. "I've never seen anyone actually have them in their blood stream—they might affect everyone like this."

"The other things you said," she mused, pulling her jacket tighter around her. "What did it mean? You said the meteor shower was my fault and that you had a spaceship…"

"I'm fairly certain that it was a metaphorical spaceship," he said, laughing. "Lex's spaceship literally was a spaceship. My secret is something less… less extreme."

Lana's eyes widened. "You have a secret… something you've been hiding, lying to me about?"

Clark's stomach tightened; this was where the big lie, the elaborate one, began. _"Stick to as much of the truth as possible," _Buffy had said.

"I met my biological father," he said. Lana stared, her eyes stretched open, and she moved sideways, letting herself fall onto the couch.

"And you didn't tell me," she muttered. "You said… you said he brainwashed you?"

"I wasn't myself, after I met him," Clark said, sitting next to her. He shifted so that he was facing her, and took her hand. "He's not exactly the kind of father that a person can be proud of."

Lana frowned. "What was he like?"

Clark sighed. "Smart," he said, simply. "Cruel, pitiless. I didn't turn out to be the son he expected."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Lana asked.

She looked into Clark's eyes and saw that the truth was burning him up inside. There was pain in his eyes, and she knew that what he said was true.

"Your parents died," he said. "They died tragically, but they loved you, and you were wanted. My parents… they didn't die. They gave me up because they didn't want me, and knowing that… it brings out a kind of shame. How could you love me with the knowledge that even my own parents couldn't force themselves to love me?"

The lie, so pungent on his tongue, made him feel sick, but he had to hope that any feelings he portrayed would be interpreted as emotion concerned with his painful story.

Lana looked heartbroken, and she drew him to her, holding him in her arms. "Clark," she whispered into his hair, "I could never stop loving you."

Even wrapped up in Lana, Clark couldn't help but hate himself; what Buffy had coined his _elaborate lie_ tasting sour in his mouth.

* * *

It was painful for Buffy to stay dormant, even if she was sitting at the bed of her dying best friend. She went for a walk, took some of her anger out on a fairly new vampire that had staked out a young woman, and then headed to the Kent farm.

She had never really developed close relationships with the other Slayers. They were all younger than her, less experienced, and held her on a fairly high pedestal; this was not exactly a great base for friendships to form on. Willow and Dawn were so deep in their own despair that they barely had time to realize that Buffy had just killed her mentor; in much the same way that she had after she had sent Angel to Hell, Buffy left.

That she ended up at the Kent farm seemed surprising, even to her, but she hadn't headed there for solace.

She arrived just as Clark's girlfriend, Lana, was leaving. When she saw Buffy, she paused.

"Buffy," she said, "I'm so thankful for what you did for Clark today."

Buffy's face, somber and set in stone, didn't react.

"I have to ask you something, though, and it's going to sound crazy, maybe." She came closer to Buffy and tried to catch her gaze, but Buffy was lost somewhere. Despite their lack of eye contact, Lana continued. "There isn't anything between you and Clark; is there?"

Still staring off into the distance, Buffy closed her eyes and let the feeling of Clark's smooth, forceful lips against hers wash over her. She felt, as if he were here right now, his hands on her waist, his teeth nipping at her lip. She could feel the power behind his motion, how every smooth shift was deliberate.

She snapped out of her reverie and turned her head slightly, meeting Lana's eyes. "No," she said firmly. "We're just friends."

Clark was waiting in the loft, his head in his hands.

"Despite everything I've been through," Buffy said as she reached the top of the stairs, "I'm still dangerously naïve."

Looking up, Clark allowed a ghost of fear to pass over his face. "I'm sorry," he said, "for kissing you like that."

She shook her head. "Don't even worry about it," she said. "It just made me realized something.

"I still feel like a child really; a child that's been through wars and saved the world, but I'm still a child that just wants to believe in the good in people.

"You're suspicious to the point that you shut everyone out of your life. You put yourself below everyone else because you think that treachery is around every corner. I trusted you, Clark, because you said that you could be trusted."

Clark stood up, and moved toward her. "What happened, Buffy, I'm sorry—"

"I know," she said softly. "I know you are. That's not even the reason that I'm here. I mean, you scared my sister, threatened to kill my best friend, and refused to help my dying friend, but that's not why I'm here."

She sighed. "You're a good person, I know you are. You threw yourself in front of a bullet to save my life, but there's darkness in you that I can't even begin to comprehend." She shook her head, and her thoughts were starting to fall out of place. She couldn't put them back into the order that they had been in, but she knew that she had to keep talking.

"It's not the alien thing; it's just that, I think we're moving too fast. Friendships, real ones, take years to form, and here I am, putting a rift between you and your girlfriend, running after you to stop you from hurting her—twice now—and already wishing that your parents could be mine."

"Buffy," Clark said. "You're not getting between me and Lana—"

"I just told you to _lie_ to her," she said. "She just asked me if there was something between us and I lied, because there is. You kissed me."

There was a long silence, and Clark stared at her, not believing that this was happening. He cared for her in a strong way, but not in a sexual way. As usual, the red Kryptonite had twisted everything around, made his thoughts apparent in all the wrong ways.

"Xander says you're not going to die," she said quietly. "He says he saw every one of us die, but you… you were still just you."

Clark didn't reply. It wasn't the first time a meteor powered person had told him something similar. _"I had a vision of you, too, when you grabbed me in the hallway,"_ the boy, Jordan had said. _"It's like you don't have an end like other people. It's like you live forever."_

She turned to leave, feeling strangely empty, unfulfilled. "Buffy," he called. She turned back. "Will I see you?" he asked. "Around?"

She smiled sadly, and in her mind she could see Xander's tragic face, already hollowed out under his cheekbones, already sickly and pale. She thought of Giles, and wondered how it was possible that a person with so much substance, so much history, could just crumble into dust like any common vampire.

And she looked up at him, his green eyes glinting in the dim loft light.

"I'm always around," she replied.

* * *


End file.
